News

Obituary: Averil Cameron

April 10, 2026
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It is with great sadness that colleagues at the Department of Historical Studies at Central European University have learnt about the passing of Dame Averil Cameron. Professor Cameron has been a distinguished historian and leading scholar on the Late Antique Mediterranean and Byzantium. After she studied Greats at Oxford, she taught at Kings College London for more than 20 years before being elected Warden of Keble College in Oxford in 1994. She was the first female Warden of Keble and left a lasting legacy during her 16 years of tenure.

Otherness in Byzantium: Imagining, Encountering, Excluding

March 27, 2026
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The program for the fourth annual Late Antique and Byzantine Studies graduate conference has now been published. Co-organized by graduate students of the Department of Historical Studies at the Central European University and the Ancient, Byzantine and Medieval Studies Cluster of the Doctoral School of Historical and Cultural Studies at the University of Vienna, the conference will take place on May 22-23 on the subject of Otherness in Byzantium: Imagining, Encountering, Excluding,

The Natalie Zemon Davis Memorial Lectures 2026: Historical Accompaniment as Method

March 24, 2026
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Last week, we hosted Prof. Sherene Seikaly from the University of California, Santa Barbara as she gave the Natalie Zemon Davis Memorial Lectures 2026 on the subject of Historical Accompaniment as Method. Prof. Seikaly gave an expansive series of lectures spanning the late nineteenth to the mid-twentieth centuries. Her lectures moved from Sudan, across the Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, and into Arab presence in mid-twentieth century England.

New Publication: The Avant-Garde of Socialism in the Prehistoric Jungle: The Temporalities of Coal Mining in 1950s Upper Silesia

March 13, 2026
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PhD candidate Jakub Gawkowski has published a new article in Art Margins. In The Avant-Garde of Socialism in the Prehistoric Jungle: The Temporalities of Coal Mining in 1950s Upper Silesia, he examines the temporal narratives embedded in the artistic representations of coal mining in post-war Poland, specifically focusing on the 1950s Upper Silesian region.

The Archival Impulse: Knowledge Production, Record Keeping, and Imperial Governance (15th-20th Centuries)

March 10, 2026
The Archival Impulse: Knowledge Production, Record Keeping, and Imperial  Governance

Next week, Prof. Jan Hennings from the department is co-organizing a conference with colleagues from the Austrian Academy of Sciences and as part of the EurAsian Transformations Cluster of Excellence.