Petitioning on the Move – Workshop in Prague

The workshop is organized in cooperation with the Unlikely refuge? and Nepostrans ERC-funded
projects.

Venue: Masaryk Institute and Archives of the Czech Academy of Sciences
Gabčíkova 10, Prague 8, Czech Republic

PROGRAM

9:45-10:00 Introduction
Gábor Egry, Michal Frankl

10:00-11:20 Defining a refugee
Chair: Lidia Zessin-Jurek

Sari Nauman: Petitions of the internally displaced in 18th-century Baltics
Afke Berger: “You Will Never Regret Having Assisted Us”. Applications for Asylum of Jews from Austria to the Dutch Committee for Jewish Refugees, 1938-1939

11:20-11:50 Coffee break

11:50-13:10 Writing beyond the national
Chair: Ségolène Plyer

Julia Bavouzet: Petitioning from the margins. The Hungarian minorities and the League of Nations
Thomas Süsler-Rohringer: Migrants’ Voices on European Integration. Petitions and letters to the European Parliament (1950s to 1980s)

13:10-14:30 Lunch

14:30-16:30 Claims towards the multi-national empire, and beyond
Chair: Gábor Egry

Doina Anca Cretu: Petitioning Aid during World War I: The Case of Refugees from Trentino
Kamil Ruszala: (Un)audible voices of refugees: Letters and Petitions from the First World War
Bohuslav Rejzl: “Honourable Police Headquarters Presidium in Prague, we’ve not got our welfare since February.” Forms of complaints and emergency requests by refugees in the First World War and post-war years

19:00 Dinner (Café Platýz)

Tomás Irish: Intellectual displacement in the aftermath of the First World War, 1918-1923
Francesca Piana: Writing displacement and social assistance from afar. The Private Information Secretariat in interwar Italy

11:20-11:50 Coffee break

11:50-13:10 Actors, languages, and nation-states (1)
Chair: Michal Frankl

Francesca Rolandi: Writing upwards to different state authorities. The refugees from Fiume/Rijeka in a fluid context (1920-1921)
Gábor Egry: Petitions about moving. Teachers facing administrative centralization and post-imperial statebuilding in early interwar Romania

13:10-14:30 Lunch

14:30-16:15 Actors, languages, and nation-states (2)
Chair: Julia Reinke

Leslie Waters: Migrants, Petitions, and Property Regimes
Emanuela Grama: Refugees, outcasts, and patterns of movement in Romania during the Second World War: petitioning the state for travel permits
Göktuğ İpek: “To be or not to be” a Turkish Citizen

16:15-16:30 Concluding remarks
Michal Frankl