MWNO Fellow Workshop – October 29th-30th, 2026 – MWS Research Center Vilnius
Convenor: Kai Willms (U Basel/MWNO Resident Fellow) / Max Weber Network Eastern Europe (MWNO)
Submission deadline: August 15th, 2026
Paradigms of research in the urban history of nineteenth-century Eastern Europe have shifted significantly in recent decades. In the Cold War period, the dominant paradigm of social history was about cities as places of industrialisation and the emergence of a modern class society; inspired by Max Weber’s ideal type of the ‘European city’, social historians also explored the development of a civil society and practices of self-government in Eastern European cities. Due to difficulties in accessing archives beyond the Iron Curtain, Western historians tended to focus on metropolises such as Saint Petersburg and Moscow, for which more sources were available. With the cultural turn and the archival revolution of the 1990s, the interest shifted to multiethnic cities across so-called imperial peripheries. The questions of how the empire attempted to symbolically represent itself in such cities, how various ethnic groups competed for cultural hegemony and how urbanisation affected the process of nation-building moved to the forefront. Most recently, the impact of spatial and infrastructural development on social and cultural relations within the city, biopolitical aspects – including the development of healthcare, public hygiene, and the political regulation of sexuality and gender relations – as well as the relations between the city and its natural environment have received increasing attention.
Drawing on the recent paradigmatic shifts, this MWNO Fellow Workshop aims at situating the history of urban development in Northeastern Europe during the ‘long’ nineteenth century in the broader context of how cities in imperial peripheries became spaces for representation of the social and cultural hierarchies of the empire and for imperial projects of modernisation.
The workshop will explore how the challenges of a changing urban life in nineteenth-century Northeastern Europe were discursively addressed, which practical solutions were found and how the political management of such challenges impacted the social and interethnic relations as well as the imperial hierarchies in cities of the region. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:
- the challenge of demographic growth and adequate housing,
- the management of mobility within and beyond the boundaries of the city,
- the relationship between urban space, violence and policing practices,
- the politics of urban sanitation and healthcare,
- changing gender relations and biopolitics in the city,
- the relationship between the city and its natural environment.
Read the full Call for Papers here.
The MWNO Fellow Workshop will take place on October 29th-30th, 2026 at the MWS Research Center Vilnius – a joint project of the German Historical Institute Warsaw (DHIW) and the Max Weber Network Eastern Europe (MWNO). The organizers will cover the accommodation and travel costs (up to a maximum amount) for participants.
Proposals should include name, affiliation, title of the presentation, and an abstract (approximately 300 words), as well as a short biographical note, and should be submitted as a single PDF file to kai.willms@unibas.ch and events@mws-osteuropa.org by August 15th, 2026.
Selected applicants will be notified no later than August 25th, 2026.