Call for Papers
Women in Late Socialism: Gender Orders, Agency and Transnational Entanglements
Berlin, Germany, 17-19 September 2026
The Chair of East European History at Humboldt University of Berlin is pleased to invite paper proposals for the conference “Women in Late Socialism: Gender Orders, Agency, and Transnational Entanglements,” sponsored by the Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Germany (Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung). The conference will take place in Berlin, Germany, on 17-19 September 2026.
At the core of the conference are women as historical actors in late socialist societies, whose spheres of action oscillated between state control, institutional participation, and everyday self-assertion. The conference aims to examine how female agency under late socialism was shaped and enacted in the domains of political engagement and withdrawal, transnational Cold War spaces and networks, knowledge production, and the politics of the body.
Proposals should be submitted in English to femaleagency2026@gmail.com and include an abstract of up to 300 words along with a CV (two pages maximum including relevant publications) as a single PDF file by 31 March 2026.
Organizing Committee: Anna Ivanova (Humboldt University), Irina Makhalova (Humboldt University), and Oksana Nagornaia (Humboldt University).