International conference | December 3–4, 2026 | Yerevan
Organizers: Max Weber Network Eastern Europe (MWNO) – Georgia Branch Office, Turpanjian Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) at the American University of Armenia
Venue: American University of Armenia, Yerevan
Deadline for proposal submission: August 10, 2026
In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women’s access to education and professional opportunities remained uneven across the Russian and Ottoman Empires. At the same time, growing opportunities for study abroad created new pathways of mobility linking minority communities with educational centres in Switzerland, Germany, France, and elsewhere in Western Europe. The conference examines women’s access to education, educational mobility, professional opportunities, and the social debates surrounding these processes by focusing on national and confessional minorities, including Armenian, Georgian, Jewish, Polish, and other groups. It covers the period from the 1860s to the 1920s, encompassing both the final decades of the empires and the profound political and social transformations that followed the First World War.
By bringing into dialogue research on women’s education, educational mobility, knowledge transfer, and professional opportunities among national and confessional minorities, the conference aims to contribute to gender history, the history of education, migration studies, intellectual history, and the history of knowledge. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- Access and restrictions: education and mobility among national and confessional minorities in the Russian and Ottoman Empires, the role of girls’ schools, teacher seminaries, denominational schools, and advanced women’s courses;
- Mobility and transimperial networks: educational migration between the Russian and Ottoman Empires and Western Europe; intellectual, philanthropic, religious, familial, and student networks facilitating educational opportunities and mobility;
- Everyday experiences abroad: social interactions, adaptation, intellectual sociability, student associations, and the formation of professional and political networks;
- Discrimination and exclusion: experiences of gender-based discrimination, antisemitism, and other forms of exclusion, and their influence on educational mobility, career opportunities, and social participation;
- Methodological approaches: statistical analyses of educational mobility, institutional distribution, fields of study, and mobility patterns; biographical, microhistorical, and prosopographical studies of women’s educational mobility, intellectual networks, and social agency;
- Knowledge transfer and intellectual exchange: women as mediators of knowledge, translation, dissemination, adaptation, and intellectual exchange in national, imperial, and transnational contexts;
- Professionalization and careers: women’s entry into academic and non-academic professions, including teaching, medicine, journalism, publishing, and social work;
- Political and civic engagement: women’s participation in political movements, reform circles, socialist organizations, women’s associations, philanthropic initiatives, and other forms of civic engagement;
- Public debates: discussions of women’s education, mobility, gender roles, morality, family, national identity, religious tradition, and social respectability.
Read the full Call for Papers here.
The working language of the conference will be English.
We invite proposals for 20-minute papers. Please submit your paper proposals (ca. 250–300 words) and a short biographical note of no more than 100 words to Dr. Arpine Maniero (Arpine.Maniero(at)collegium-carolinum.de) and Dr. Naira Sahakyan (naira.sahakyan(at)aua.am) by August 10, 2026.
Applicants will be informed about participation by August 31, 2026
For any organizational questions you can contact: info(at)mws-georgia.org