CLIOHRES.net

Second Year Summary Report

 

Objectives

The CLIOHRES.net Network of Excellence is specifically designed to address the novel historical challenges, needs and research opportunities emerging from today’s context of a growing and expanding Europe. In the view of the partners, this is a vital area of endeavour, perhaps the most important and urgent task for building and strengthening the foundations of a peaceful, productive European community of citizens. Basic and unquestioned attitudes about ourselves and others are rooted in the ways that the scientific community in each country defines its research agenda. Historians create and cultivate selective views of the national or local past, which in turn underpin pervasive ideas about identities and stereotypes: national, religious, gender, political, etc. National historiographies today are still largely shaped by problems and preoccupations reflecting previous political and cultural contexts. CLIOHRES.net aims to create and promote a new structure and agenda for the community of historical research, redirecting its critical efforts along more fruitful lines. The consortium is uniquely placed to accomplish this very ambitious goal. It has developed as a partnership over the past fifteen years; it includes almost all member states, as well as neighbouring and third countries; it possesses an unrivalled knowledge of national and local differences in the use and abuse of history. The Network includes six thematic groups organised to conduct research in six interlocking areas, promoting cooperation and synergy between historians, geographers, philologists, art historians and other human scientists of different national background so as to redirect and redefine approaches. Its broad networking capacity allows it to disseminate its findings effectively. With its links with other important European projects and networks it can exert a powerful influence in shaping the future structure of historical research, both popular and academic.

 

Structure

In order to reach its objectives, the CLIOHRES Network of Excellence had to be extensive, both in geographic and thematic scope, and thus truly to represent the diversity of European scholarship. Based on partnership that has developed through many years, CLIOHRES.net includes members from 45 partner universities in 31 countries. Each university is represented by two senior scholars and two doctoral students, which means that the network has in total 180 members. The network is divided into six Thematic Workgroups in which staff and doctoral students organise their work and compare and confront their own views and methodologies with those of their colleagues. This will provide in depth understanding and examples of research organised thematically. The Thematic Workgroups are designed to allow all the members of the consortium to contribute using their personal research experience and knowledge to the general research project. Each Thematic Workgroup has a leader and a reference person in the central management structure; the logistics of the activities and the primary scientific responsibility for the project lie with the theme leader and his/her institution, with the reference person in the central management group, and with other partner institutions (three for each group) which will assist in organising conferences and promoting research on the Theme in various ways. The six thematic areas and coordinating institutions are as follows:

1. States, Legislation, Institutions Coordinated by the Autonomous University of Madrid (thematic leader), and University of Graz

2. Power and Culture Coordinated by the University of Latvia, Riga (thematic leader), and the University of Cardiff

3. Religious and Philosophical Concepts Coordinated by the University of Coimbra (thematic leader), and St Kliment University of Sofia

4. Work, Gender and Society Coordinated by the University of Utrecht (thematic leader), and the University of Bologna

5. Frontiers and Identities Coordinated by the Charles University of Prague (thematic leader), and the National University of Ireland, Galway

6. Europe and the World Coordinated by the University of Debrecen (thematic leader), and the National University of Ireland, Galway

Participation in the Workgroup is open to other researchers in the Inner and Outer circle of the partnership, with different levels of financial support. The events and activities designed and guided by the Thematic Workgroups are coordinated at an overall level to ensure that the results of each feed into the work of the others. In addition to the themes of each workgroup, the network works on coordinated transversal research projects that are designed to cut across and link the work of the Thematic Workgroups. Each year, one such transversal theme is discussed, both in the workgroups and between the groups in the annual plenary meetings. The transversal themes, which are ‘citizenship’, ‘identity’, ‘gender’, 'migration’, ‘discrimination’, and ‘tolerance’, have been chosen for their importance in European citizenship today and because of the light with the Thematic Work Groups can throw on them from their different perspectives.

 

Operation

CLIOHRES.net aspires not only to integrate the actual partners into a solid and effective network, but also to have access to a large number of research communities and to have impact on how Europeans understand their past. This reflects the basic commitment of all CLIOHRES.net partners, as well as of the parent network, to the ethical imperative that proposes using the insights gained in scholarly research to do everything possible to bring about a new critical and self-critical vision of the existing frame of historical reference, both in academic and in popular culture, with the ultimate aim of enabling citizens to place in context, understand and view critically the divisive and confrontational ideas that many hold today about their role within their country and their country’s role in Europe and the world. The idea of the network is, therefore, to progress gradually from a critical awareness of the diversity in European scholarship towards developing new paradigms in European historical research. The work of the network is conceived in five phases, each corresponding to one year in the life of the project. The first phase is dedicated to reconnaissance, or mapping, of how the questions perceived as important for the thematic area of each workgroup appear in the different national historiographies. During the second phase the workgroups define transversal problems which are relevant in a more general context, investigating and illuminating the relation between the two levels. In the third phase, the workgroups concentrate on comparing and reviewing sources and methodologies, and in the fourth on cross-fertilisation, that is on showing how problems defined in other historiographies can be developed in new contexts. Finally, the workgroups are to define new and relevant projects, in the broadest sense, for future research in the sector. In the first year, all the groups had the objective of preparing a volume dedicating to the ‘mapping’ of the field. During the second year, the overarching objective for all groups, whatever their thematic area, was to define 'connecting themes' (that is themes that appear suitable for giving significant results in all national historiographies, and conducting research on them.

 

Outcomes – the second year
In the sphere of the general objectives indicated above, the Network has a variety of activities and products of which here we single out a) the publications with which it presents the results of its research; b) the dissemination of its publications and results; c) its contribution to educational policy.

a. Second year publications:
During the first year, the Network produced 8 volumes, 6 of them on 'mapping' the research areas in the various national traditions and historiographical communities, one volume on the transversal theme,  "Citizenship", and a doctoral thesis on Spanish democratic and republican groups in the 19th century. All these are available on line from the www.cliohres.net site and in book form.
Now, at the end of the second year, CLIOHRES.net has finished its second year of activities, dedicated to proposing 'connecting themes' and carrying out and publishing research on them. The transversal theme which runs through the work of all the research groups during the second year is "Migration". The works are is now ready for publication on-line (www.cliohres.net) and in book form by PLUS, the University Press of Pisa.
I. Research volumes by the six Thematic Work Groups:

1. J. Pan Montojo, F. Pedersen (eds.), Communities in European History. Representations, Jurisdiction, Conflicts;
2. J. Osmond (ed.), Power and Culture. Identity, Ideology, Representation;
3. J. Carvalho (ed.), Religion and Power in Europe: Conflict and Convergence;
4. G. Hagemann (ed.), Reciprocity and Redistribution: Work and Welfare Reconsidered;
5. S.G. Ellis, L. Klusáková (eds.), Imagining Frontiers. Contesting Identities;
6. M. N. Harris (ed.), Sights and Insights: Interactive Images of Europe and the Wider World.

 

 

 

 

 

II. Transversal Theme, "migration":
A volume on the second year's transversal theme, "migration", has also been prepared. It is entitled Immigration/Emigration in Historical Perspective and is edited by A. K. Isaacs.

 

 

III. Doctoral dissertation:
The doctoral dissertation by Marta Smagacz, of the Jagellonian University of Krakow, entitled Revitalisation of Urban Space. Social Changes in Kraków's Kazimierz and the Ticinese District in Milan has been prepared for publication in English. It includes summaries in Polish and in Italian.

 

Dissemination
The Network dedicates great energies to disseminating its publications and knowledge about its activities. It has presented its activities in various venues, at public meetings and conferences (including the Research Programme Committee in Berlin (March 2007), various meetings of the History Thematic Network (CLIOHnet2: Plenary meetings, Bergen November 2006; Vilnius May 2007; Turkish National Meeting, Adana March 2007; Press conference in Maribor March 2007, Greek National Meeting in Thessaloniki, May 2007 etc.), at the meeting of the Archipelago (Pisa, July 2006, Brussels June 2007), in Bologna at a joint meeting with the Italian Women's Library in Bologna, at the Biblioteca Joanina at the University of Coimbra, and elsewhere.
The publications are all available free of charge from our website; several hundred copies have been sent to libraries, universities and reviews. We have developed CLIOHRES postcards and posters as an inexpensive dissemination tool; we also printed a CLIOHRES presentation booklet which is available on line and which is now going into a second printing to include the second cycle of publications.
Our books are included in the catalogues of the American Association of University Presses: the Course Adoption catalogue for European History and Multicultural Studies and the Library Catalogue for University and Secondary School Libraries.
Articles about CLIOHRES have appeared in major national newspapers and reviews.

Website:
Our website (www.cliohres.net) has been restyled to make it more attractive; it has been developed into a unique networking tool, now containing public spaces and articulated restricted spaces to help our research groups to carry out their work; a new and important feature is the "Production site", a restricted space accessible only in the final stages of electronic editing, which has allowed us to streamline the production process.

Contribution to debate on educational policy
Thanks to the trans-generational character of our Network (it includes 90 doctoral students) we have been able to carry out a very interesting survey of the present situation in doctoral studies in 31 countries. In conjunction with CLIOHnet2 and with the Tuning Educational Structures in Europe project, we have been able to carry out a broad consultation with doctoral candidates and academics on the competences necessary for third cycle degrees. At our Plenary meeting in Reykjavik, December 2006, the CLIOHRES doctoral researchers held an Assembly to discuss the results. The findings of their discussion groups form part of the publication on Third Cycle History studies, now being published in the first issue of the Tuning Journal. This work has also formed the basis for the paper on Quality in Third Cycle studies written by J.M. Gonzalez, A.K. Isaacs and R. Wagenaar.