CBBES Summer school 2025: Transnational Perspectives on Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea Region: Past and Present

This Summer School critically examines transnational approaches, highlighting their distinction from government-focused international relations and global studies perspectives. It explores the epistemic potential of transnationalism for research on Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea region. By drawing on broader transnational and decolonial genealogies, and the region’s role in global civil society, the school fosters discussions on the impacts of political, social, economic, cultural, religious, and artistic exchanges involving Eastern Europe. If you have any questions, please contact us: summeruniversity@sh.se.

Introduction

Focusing on distinctive features, unique events, and specific developments is a common approach to studying national politics, histories, and societies. However, ideas, technological innovations, and political movements have historically transcended national borders, a phenomenon amplified in today’s globalized world. Scholarship on Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea Region often emphasizes regional differences rather than examining the exchange of knowledge, practices, and institutions. Recent studies on empires, inter-imperial relations, and the role of Eastern European actors in transnational mobility, commercial entanglements, and cultural exchange have highlighted the region’s historical and present participation in global connectivity. Transnational interactions have significantly shaped global economic, scientific, and cultural cooperation, both within the region and beyond. Nevertheless, challenges to transnational connectivity persist, most notably embodied by the Russian war on Ukraine, but also from a gender perspective or within the EU, where populist politics is on the rise both in the “East” and in the “West”.

Key topics include:

• Theoretical perspectives on global connectivity and the exchange of people, goods, and ideas in modern history and the present.
• The circulation of productive, educational, cultural, and scientific expertise, with a focus on Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea Region's contributions to transnational exchange.
• Inter-imperiality, colonialism, and decolonial thought, examining Eastern Europe’s role within these frameworks.
• Regional perspectives on the global Cold War and anticolonial movements.
• Global civil society and social movements: transnational participation and activism from Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea Region.
• Gendered transnationalism in Eastern Europe and the Baltic Sea Region.
• Transnational approaches to migration and border regimes.
• Transnational perspectives on the human-nature nexus.
  

Organization

• Students are awarded 7.5 ECTs for the completed course and will receive a Certificate of Completion.
• Participation in the Summer School is free of charge. Accommodation costs (5 nights), including breakfasts, lunches, two dinners, and an excursion, will be covered by CBEES.
• Students are responsible for covering their travel expenses to and from Stockholm and local transportation costs within the city.
  
  Apply and submit your application by visiting Södertörn University calendar.

Organizers of the CBEES Summer School 2025:

• Yulia Gradskova, Associate Professor and Research Coordinator at CBEES, Södertörn University
• Norbert Götz, Professor, Institute of Contemporary History, Södertörn University
• Julia Malitska, PhD, Senior Researcher, School of Historical and Contemporary Studies; Research Coordinator, CBEES, Södertörn University