Our colleague and friend Stefan Donecker passed away on September 1, 2022 after a long, serious illness, a few weeks before he would have celebrated his 45th birthday.

From 1995 to 2003 Stefan studied history and Scandinavian studies at the Universities of Vienna and Umeå. In 2003 he received his master’s degree with distinction and wrote his thesis on the construction of national identity in Sweden. From 2005, he was a doctoral student at the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence, where he received his doctorate in 2010 on the topic of early modern hypotheses on the origin of the “un-German” Livonians.

After working in Greifswald and Konstanz, Stefan joined the Institute for Medieval Research at the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2012, initially with his Marie-Curie project “The ‘Germanic Migration of Peoples’ in Early Modern Historical Thought. Origins and Development of a Master Narrative of German Nationalism, 1500 –1830”.

In addition, and thereafter, he was involved in the institute’s large-scale projects, such as Walter Pohl’s ERC project SCIRE from 2015 onwards. In 2018, he started his research project “Ideas of Migration: Migration as an Artefact of Scholarly Thought”, funded by the Innovation Fund of the Austrian Academy, which he was able to complete well in 2021, already marked by the disease.

His areas of research were the intellectual and scholarly history of the early modern period, national and pre-national identity formation, northern and northeastern Europe (Scandinavia and the Baltic Sea region) during the early modern period, and the construction and cultural perception of “northernness”.

The latter has also interested him with regard to supernatural phenomena (witchcraft, werewolves) as well as he has dealt with the representation and fascination of the Middle Ages in modern media (such as medieval ruler genealogy in the series “Game of Thrones”). On all these topics, Stefan has made significant, even trend-setting contributions to the expansion of our knowledge – and has also managed to captivate and entertain his audience.

Stefan was a researcher and historian with heart and soul and at the same time he was a committed and inspiring university lecturer. In addition to his many years of teaching at the University of Vienna (since 2007), the University of Innsbruck and in Germany, he was also active in a number of societies, such as the Austrian-Estonian Society, of which he was secretary.

Apart from his outstanding achievements in science and teaching, Stefan was an enrichment for the Institute for Medieval Research through his friendly and cheerful personality – and far beyond, probably for all those who had the good fortune and privilege to get to know him better.

We have dedicated the recently published volume “Historiography and Identity V: The Emergence of New Peoples and Polities in Europe, 1000-1300”to Stefan.

He contributed an article on “Biblical Motifs and the Shaping of Ethnic Categories in the Chronicle of Henry of Livonia” to it.

Veronika Wieser <Veronika.Wieser@oeaw.ac.at>

PIMo was delighted to host its final Summer School, Annual Conference and MC meeting in at the Netherlands Institute in Morocco (NIMAR) at the end of May. We are very grateful to our hosts at the NIMAR who extended such a warm welcome to us. We are also extremely grateful to Cátia Antunes and Nadia Bouras for all the hard work they put into making these events so successful. Their effort and that of the team they led was clear to see both in the intellectual quality and ethical fibre that ran through the whole week of events.

The Summer School brought together a range of excellent doctoral researchers and early career researchers and linked them both with PIMo trainers and local community groups in Rabat for the co-production of research and the sharing of skills. We were blown away by both the dedication of the participants and the quality of the work they produced. Our gratitude goes to Cátia, Nadia, Marta Bucholc, all the organisers, trainers, partners, and, most especially, to the participants who made this such a special event.

The Summer School was followed by an extremely rich conference on the theme of ‘Crossings’, with papers historicising and problematising migratory patterns in the broad Mediterranean space. The participants of the Summer School were able to showcase their broader research and the excellent projects they co-produced with local activists. It was also fantastic to see speakers from our partners in the Horizon 2020 project ITHACA. Thanks to the commitment of our organisers, the attendees were also able to meet with local activists, including the migrant rights organisation GADAM, to learn about contemporary questions of migration in Morocco.

The week was rounded out with the final MC meeting of the PIMo project on Saturday May 27. We opened with a fascinating lecture from Prof Kenza Oumlil of Al Akhawayn University and the ITHACA project on ‘Media Narratives of Sub-Saharan Women Migrants in Morocco’. This was followed by presentations from each of the Working Group leaders, giving an account of the quantity, quality, and variety of the activities of PIMo over the duration of the project. We also had reports from the Science Communication Officer and the Training Schools Officer on their contribution as well as an engaging reflection from Vice-Chair Katrina O’Loughlin on the cultural, intellectual, and political work realised through PIMo. Our Action Chair Giovanni Tarantino gave a rich and engaging account of the operation of the project in sometimes challenging circumstances, highlighting PIMo’s exceptional productivity and the enduring nature of the bonds of collaboration it has fostered. A clear example of this was provided when Viviana Tagliaferri from the ITHACA project addressed the meeting, exploring potential avenues of cooperation into the future. We rounded out the event with a broad discussions of the lessons we have drawn from PIMo, some of the obstacles we have encountered and the many ways in which we plan to build on the work done in this project into the future. The minutes will shortly be available on the PIMo website.

This was a fitting series of events to begin to round out the final phase of the PIMo project. We are grateful to all participants and especially to those who made it possible.