Workshop “Experts in Transition: Political Epistemologies of 1980s–2000s East Central Europe”
On July 9–10, 2026, the Institute of Contemporary History in Ljubljana will host the international workshop:
Experts in Transition: Political Epistemologies of 1980s–2000s East Central Europe
The workshop is open to the public and to interested scholars. If you are planning to participate, please write to Adela Hîncu – adela.hincu@inz.si in advance.
Workshop program
Day 1 – July 9
9.00 – 9.15 Welcome
9.15 – 10.00 Daria Khokhlova (University of Zurich)
“Domestic Expertise and the Politicisation of ‘Western Influence’: School Education Reform and the Soros Foundations in Russia, 1980s–2000s”
Discussant: Ella Rossman (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe (GWZO) Leipzig / Prague)
10.00 – 10.45 Andrei Ilin
“From Soviet to Russian Higher Education: The Continuity of Technocratic Expertise, 1980–2000”
Discussant: Jan Surman (Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences)
10.45 – 11.30 Tomislav Branđolica and Vjera Brković (University of Zagreb)
“‘Farewell to Marxism, What Next?’: Reforming the Educational Reform and the End of Socialist Schooling in Croatia”
Discussant: Tjaša Konovšek (INZ)
11.30 – 12.00 Coffee break
12.00 – 12.45 Natalia Jarska (Tadeusz Manteuffel Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences) (online)
“Social Sciences and the Assessment of Gender Inequality in Late Socialist Poland”
Discussant: Dietlind Hüchtker (University of Vienna)
12.45 – 13.30 Kristine Baghdasaryan (Freie Universität Berlin; Pázmány Péter Catholic University) (online)
“From Demographic Planning to Reproductive Rights”
Discussant: Ella Rossman
13.30 – 14.30 Lunch break
14.30 – 15.15 Sanja Lukic (University of Belgrade)
“The Fulbright Bridge: Serbian Economists as Transition Experts (1980s–2000s)”
Discussant: Agustín Cosovschi (INZ)
15.15 – 16.00 Sonja Dragovic (ISCTE University Institute of Lisbon)
“‘We Were New Belgrade’: How Spatial Planning Expertise Changed during the Post-Yugoslav Transition”
Discussant: Katrin Steffen (Northeast Institute at the University of Hamburg)
16.00 – 16.30 Coffee break
16.30 – 17.15 Andrzej Frączysty (University of Łódź)
“Management, Self-Management, Psychotherapy: The Status and Role of Psychotherapeutic and Psychological Expertise in Late Socialist Poland”
Discussant: Friedrich Cain (University of Vienna)
17.15 – 18.00 Jessica Lumanisha (Goldsmiths, University of London)
“‘Było, minęło’: Intimate Surveillance and Biopolitics in the Governance of African Students in Late Socialist Poland”
Discussant: Johanna Hügel (University of Erfurt)
Day 2 – July 10
9.00 – 9.45 Martin Babička (Institute of Contemporary History, Czech Academy of Sciences)
“How Contradictions of Socialist Expertise Resulted in Postsocialist Disputes Between Rationalists and Postmodernists, Czechia 1988–1994”
Discussant: Bernhard Kleeberg (University of Erfurt)
9.45 – 10.30 Olga Trufanova (Max Weber Network Eastern Europe)
“Post-Growth in Socialism, Growth in Post-Socialism? Debating Economy and Ecology in the (former) Soviet Union, 1970s-2000s”
Discussant: Adela Hîncu (INZ)
10.30 – 11.15 Ileana Năchescu (Rutgers University)
“Flawed Modernities: On How Austerity Has Come to Define State Socialism but Not Capitalism”
Discussant: Adela Hîncu
11.15 – 11.45 Coffee break
11.45 – 12.30 Jonáš Jánsky (Central European University)
“Positive Deviation in/of Sociology: Formation of Sociology as a Democratic Discipline in Slovakia between the 1980s and the 1990s”
Discussant: Dietlind Hüchtker
12.30 – 13.15 Juhan Saharov (University of Tartu)
“From Experts to Revolutionaries: Economist, Sociologist, Futurist, and Lawyer in the Estonian Sovereignty Movement (1987–89)”
Discussant: Bernhard Kleeberg
13.15 – 14.15 Lunch break
14.15 – 15.00 Simone Bellezza (University of Eastern Piedmont)
“A Missed Opportunity: Reforms in Ukraine and the Contribution of Diaspora Experts Through the Case of Bohdan Hawrylyshyn”
Discussant: Friedrich Cain
15.00 – 15.45 Jean-Baptiste Godon (Nanterre University)
“Russian Young Reformers and East Central Europe: The Continental Roots of Russian Post-Socialist Transition”
Discussant: Jan Surman
15.45 – 16.15 Coffee break
16.15 – 17.45 Roundtable discussion
The workshop is funded by the European Union through the Marie Skłodowska-Curie research project “Trans/Socio: Transnational Sociology and Concepts of Social Expertise in Eastern Europe, 1970s–2000s” at the Institute of Contemporary History (Ljubljana); the Chair of History of Science, Faculty of Philosophy of the University of Erfurt (Germany); the Faculty Center for Transdisciplinary Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna (Austria); and the Lumina Quaeruntur fellowship ‘Images of science’ in Czechoslovakia 1918-1945-1968” at the Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences (Prague).