CALL FOR PAPERS: NON-ELITE ENCOUNTERS WITH NATIONHOOD IN THE LATE HABSBURG EMPIRE (1848-1918)
Non-Elite Encounters with Nationhood in the Late Habsburg Empire (1848-1918)
(Neelitna srečevanja z nacionalnostjo v pozni Habsburški monarhiji (1848-1918)
1-2 March 2027, Ljubljana
Call for Proposals
In recent years, historical nationalism scholarships has seen an exciting turn towards history from below. Employing concepts such as “everyday nationalism”, “banal nationalism” as well as “everyday ethnicity”, scholars have turned towards methodologies that enable the study of nationalism’s ambiguous reception among “ordinary people”. Within this scholarship, the wider region of Central and Eastern Europe has long figured as “one of the powerhouses of innovative research” (Berecz, 2023, p. 4). Furthermore, due to its diverse and idiosyncratic solutions towards governing cultural and, in extension, national diversity, the Habsburg Empire likewise appears as one of nationalism research’s prime case study areas.
To further this budding subfield of research, the present conference aims to explore non-elite encounters with nationhood within the context of the late Habsburg Empire. By approaching the history of nationalism from below, the conference aims to resituate the lived experience of nationhood and study its intersections with various alternative or complementary forms of belonging (gender, class, local/provincial patriotism, etc.). In chronological terms, we limit our inquiry to the seven decades spanning from the 1848 revolutions to empire’s collapse following the Great War in 1918. In line with its bottom-up framing, we are primarily interested in the experiences of “non-elite actors”, i.e., people who are “usually not actively or consciously engaged in concerted, organized nation-building strategies, or who are supposed to play a rather executory role (e.g., lower middle-class bureaucrats) in nationalizing policies designed by others” (Beyen and Ginderachter 2012, 9–10).
As a dualist monarchy that was also characterized by varying levels of local/regional legislative autonomy, the late Habsburg Empire had arguably consisted of a patchwork of local contexts that displayed considerable variance when it came to lived experiences of nationalism. To gain a better understanding of these intricacies, we welcome proposals that engage:
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the local embeddedness of nationalism and its specific manifestations vis a vis the Habsburg Empire’s diverse local contexts (rural vs. urban; Cis- vs. Transleithanian; etc.);
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the situational character of people’s engagement with nationhood;
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the role that categories such as gender, class, religion or education played in people’s engagement with nationalist mobilization;
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the non-nationalist (e.g. economic/pragmatic) motives that fueled seemingly nationalist practices;
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divergences between elite conceptions of nationhood/national categories and popular practices on the ground.
The conference will take place at the Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana, and is organized by the “Resituating the National in the Age of Nationalism: Popular Encounters with Nationhood in a Habsburg-Austrian Borderland” research project led by Prof Rok Stergar (University of Ljubljana) and funded by the Slovene Research and Innovation Agency.
This conference is being co-sponsored by the Wirth Institute of Austrian and Central European Studies, with the conference’s keynote to be featured as the first “Wirth Institute Lecture,” to be published in the journal Central European Studies. The keynote will be given by Prof Keely Stauter-Halstedt (University of Illinois Chicago).
The organizers will cover meals throughout the duration of the conference. Likewise, we may provide limited financial support to cover travel and accommodation costs for researchers with no institutional affiliation.
We welcome applications from both early career (doctoral researchers) as well as established scholars. Applications should include an abstract (up to 300 words) as well as a short biography (up to 200 words). Applications are due on 16 October 2026. Applicants will be informed regarding their acceptance by 30 October 2026.
We also expect to publish selected papers in a themed issue of a scholarly journal. The journal Central European History has expressed a preliminary interest in publishing it.
Please apply using the online form: https://forms.cloud.microsoft/e/6Mf8vEFw1v