CFP: Learning about (post)socialist space: concepts and media of the gographical education in former socialist countries

The Leibniz Institute for Regional Geography together with the Collaborative Research Centre 1199 ‘Processes of Spatialization under the Global Condition’ are inviting participants for the interdisciplinary workshop dedicated to the system of geographical education in former socialist countries. The workshop shall lead to a publication and possible exhibition project.

We are interested to explore the way geographical and spatial knowledge about post-socialist countries and the other parts of the world was (and is) constructed in Eastern Europe and post-Soviet countries and how it has been integrated in educational systems over the last century. We aim to capture a wide means of educations – from school education (textbooks, images, photography, maps and atlases) to public education (museums, media, art and state propaganda). We also seek to analyse the system of education on spatial knowledge itself by approaching various institutions, policies and actors, the knowledge transfer between (post)-Soviet countries and Eastern Europe, and the implementation and appropriation of the knowledge and ideas. We are interested to explore transregional knowledge (travel reports, expedition diaries and footage), and to understand what knowledge about the world was considered to be important for school and public education. We are also seeking to explore how this knowledge was contested or questioned on the backdrop of the processes of decolonisation and distancing from Soviet legacy. We are aiming to capture the diverse landscape of the spatial education concepts and policies to answer whether we can talk about socialist spatial language, or sovietisation of the spatial knowledge and their visual representations in Eastern Europe and former Soviet republics.

The organisers invite scholars from diverse background (aimed but not limited to human geographers, historians, sociologists, art historians, environmental historians) to submit an abstract of 250 words and a short CV to LAPSS22@leibniz-ifl.de by the end of January 2022. Accepted contributors would be notified by end of February 2022 and asked to submit the first drafts (of 3000 – 4000 words) by July 2022.

More information you will find in the call for participants.