Belgrade Training School Call for Applications, Deadline March 31st

Goals of the Training School

The broad world of Southeastern Europe and the Mediterranean from ancient times nourished the great stories that spanned over distant times and places. The focus of the research done within the Cost Action 18140 People in Motion: Entangled Histories of Displacement across the Mediterranean, or PIMo, explores common forms of displacement and dispossession across the Mediterranean from the fifteenth century to the present.

The training school in Belgrade will explore this world, divided among different Empires in the Early modern period, and became the place where different thoughts and ideas crossed visible and invisible borders and overcame language barriers finding carriers among people and objects. Thought in motion, captured on paper, represented in an image, or whispered in the ear, created the intellectual bridge that connected Otherness and unified Diversities. Intellectual/cultural transfer and translation became powerful tools for acquiring, expanding, and sharing knowledge and constant companion of human history. The translation was always a human journey through inner and outer worlds, an emotional and intellectual adventure that challenged certainties, prejudices, and personal convictions. It compared languages and contexts, world views, cultures, and empires.

The task of the training school in Belgrade is to shed light on these issues and to equip young scholars with the specific intellectual tools necessary for understanding the central role of translation/cultural transfer in the Mediterranean context and with practical skills for writing grants applications. It aims to explore the “visible and invisible networks” between cultures, religions, and politics in the Mediterranean area from the 15th to 21st century and to show the ways such connections were (and are) artificially separated by political, ideological, and physical borders.

The main objective is to offer an opportunity for research development, training, and exchange of ideas for Ph.D. and postdoctoral students working in Mediterranean Studies, Migration Studies, Cultural Transfers, and History of Emotions. The entangled intellectual, cultural, religious, political and material histories of the Mediterranean will be unfolded following the displacement and resettlement of minority groups and individuals and the emotional responses of displaced peoples and the communities they orbit and join.

School sessions will consist of lectures and seminars delivered by prominent professors of history, sociology, arts, theology, and political sciences from various countries and in-depth discussion sessions on the participating trainees’ Ph.D. and postdoctoral research projects.