GEOP: Conferences

GEOP supports the organization of international, multi-disciplinary conferences on Jewish history and culture, museum studies and memory studies.

• From Shtetl to Post – Jewish Town, 8-10 September, 2024
  The conference will explore how shtetls like Opatów became post-Jewish towns and how their Jewish communities are remembered by those who once lived there and by those who live there today.


• The Accidental Metropolis? Jewish Łódź from 1800 to present, 25-27 August, 2024
  This conference will take a broad perspective on the history of the Jewish community in Łódź before the war, during the Holocaust and after.


• Jewish Childhood in Eastern Europe, 22 February, 2024
  The conference launching vol. 36 of "Polin. Studies in Polish Jewry." The volume is an examination of the history of children, childhood and child-rearing in Jewish Eastern Europe.


• Jewish or Common Heritage? (Dis-)appropriation of Synagogue Architecture in East-Central Europe since 1945, 12-14 September, 2023
  The conference aims at tracing the fate of synagogue architecture in East-Central Europe since 1945.


• International conference "East Central Europe at the Crossroads: Jewish Transnational Networks and Identities", 18-20 June, 2023
  This conference brings together the latest scholarship on the broad themes of transnationalism, intersectionality and cross-border exchanges in Jewish history from the early modern period to the present.


• International Conference "European Jews Facing the Imminence of the Holocaust", 23-25 April, 2023
  The conference’s aim is to identify and describe the Jewish experience of life amidst the imminent threat of destruction during the Holocaust. The conference marks the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.


• International Conference Operation Reinhardt and the Destruction of Polish Jews, 27-29 November, 2022
  The conference organized to mark the 80th anniversary of Operation Reinhardt seeks to present the newest research on the Holocaust in Poland.


• International session: Artistic and Architectural Research in Memory Studies, 6-7 July, 2022
  The international session "Artistic and Architectural Research in Memory Studies" accompanies Natalia Romik’s exhibition "Hideouts. Architecture of Survival," currently on display at Zachęta — National Gallery of Art in Warsaw.


• Conference "Jewish Initiative and Agency under Communism", 28-30 June, 2022
  The international conference seeks to look for new paradigms in studying Jewish history in Eastern Europe after 1945.


• What’s New, What’s Next? Innovative Methods, New Sources, and Paradigm Shifts in Jewish Studies, 3-7 October, 2021
  The international interdisciplinary conference will explore new directions in the study of East and Central European Jews


• Biographies and Politics: Involvement of Jews and Activists of Jewish Origin in Leftist Movements in 19th and 20th Century Poland, 1-2 December, 2019
  The aim of the conference is to outline the actual involvement of Jews and activists of Jewish origin in the leftist movements of the 19th and 20th centuries from the perspective of individual motivations, ideological choices and personal biographies.
   
• Jews Against Nazi Germany During World War II, 19-20 September, 2019
  Marking the 80th anniversary of World War II, international conference "Jews Against Nazi Germany During World War II" provides the opportunity to discuss the complex topic of Jewish contributions to the fight against Nazi Germany and its allies as well as Jewish resistance to the Nazi extermination policy.
   
• International academic conference "November Hopes. Jews and the Independence of Poland in 1918", 29-30 November, 2018
  The conference’s topic was the attitude of Jewish communities towards Poland regaining its independence in 1918. In the conference participated scholars from Poland, Germany, the United States, Canada and Israel.
   
• "March '68. Fifty Years Later", 13-15 March, 2018
  The aim of the conference was to ponder together on the causes, the course and the aftermath of March ’68 in a comparative perspective
   
• Chone Shmeruk, in memoriam, in May 2017
  The conference was aimed at recalling the life and work of Chone Shmeruk, one of the leading scholars of Yiddish language and literature, who passed away 20 years ago. Professor Shmeruk was a lecturer at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, but he spent his youth and final years in Warsaw.
   
• Museums and Their Publics at Sites of Conflicted History, in March 2017
  The conference explored the role of museums in negotiating new public histories in societies in transition, as old narratives and historical policies are questioned and stories once silenced are given voice. Of special interest was how the historical narratives constructed in museums help to shape new social relations in a dynamically changing present.
   
• I. L. Peretz and His Circle, in September 2015
  The conference, attended by scholars from Poland, Israel, France, Germany, Sweden, Great Britain, Australia, Canada and the United States, aimed at presenting Peretz not merely as a writer, but also as an ‘institution’, owing to whom Warsaw at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries became the centre of Yiddish culture.
   
• From Ibrahim ibn Yakub to 6 Anielewicz Street, in May 2015
  The conference introduced the POLIN Museum's Core Exhibition to the scholarly public and reviewed the present state of knowledge on the history of Jews in the Polish lands.

Additionally, GEOP supports and co-organizes conferences:

• Polish Jewish Studies Workshop - Generations and Genealogies, Ann Arbor, 2-4 April, 2017
  The aim of the Polish Jewish Studies Initiative and this workshop is to establish an international forum for communication among scholars working in the growing field of Polish Jewish studies; to identify theoretical and methodological developments and new research; and to create a forum for scholars, educators, and activists who rigorously pursue the study of Polish and Jewish cultures more intentionally.
   
• Jews and Others: Ethnic Relations in Eastern and Central Europe from 1917 and Onwards, 2-4 October, 2017 
  The conference is aimed at reassessing the profound implications of the events of 1917-1918 through a regional lens.
   
• Analysing Jewish Europe Today: perspectives from a new generation Third Conference of Emerging  Researchers, 23-25 October, 2017 
  The conference is aimed at analyzing a broad spectrum of issues pertaining contemporary Jewish Europe, covering topics such as: future perspectives for Jewish Europe, new Jewish identities, political divisiveness in relationship with Israel, the role of Jews and the need of Jewish voices in European civil society, the development of Jewish “spaces” – encounters between Jews and non-Jews in contemporary Europe, as well as anti- and philo-semitism.
   
• The Seventh International Conference for Jewish Studies Researchers, 14-16 November, 2017
  The aim of this conference is to gather Jewish Studies Researchers in purpose of sharing the latest research on Jewish Studies worldwide. 
   
• Academic session "Revolution of photography – photography as revolution. Jewish topics in photography before and after 1917" at the ASEEES convention, 10 November, 2017
   
• Fifth Annual Polish Jewish Studies Workshop, Centering the Periphery: Polish Jewish Cultural Production Beyond the Capital, Rutgers University, 5-6 March, 2018
  The workshop will focus on Jewish cultural production, but also on cultural collaborations and tensions between Christians and Jews in the years of Poland’s partitions and independence (1772-1939) in urban centers other than Warsaw
   
• 11th Congress of the European Association for Jewish Studies, Searching for the Roots of Jewish Traditions, 15-19 July, 2018
  GEOP and POLIN Museum are organizing the Jewish Museology Section during the Congress.
   
• Education for Excellence, Diversity and Respect: Transformative 21st Century Innovations, 22-25 August, 2018, Seattle, USA
  International multidisciplinary conference devoted to life and work of Janusz Korczak.
   
• Academic session "Aftermath of a Jewish Death: Beliefs and Rituals in Central and Eastern Europe (The 19th and 20th Centuries)", ASEEES convention, 24 November, 2019

This program was made possible thanks to Taube Philanthropies, the William K. Bowes, Jr. Foundation, and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland.