Call for Papers: Session S27: “Emerging Cities – Knowledge and Urbanisation in Europe’s Borderlands 1880–1945“

Session Organizers:
Dr. Heidi Hein-Kircher
heidi.hein-kircher@herder-institut.de
Herder Institute for Historical Research on East Central Europe

Dr. Oliver Hochadel
oliver.hochadel@imf.csic.es
Institució Milà i Fontanals

We invite paper proposals for a session at the EAUH 2016 on knowledge transfer between cities in Europe’s Borderlands 1880 -1945

Until now the cities of Eastern and Southern Europe have mainly been looked at through the prism of migration and institutions of technology transfer (such as universities). Implicitly or explicitly this suggests a transfer of knowledge and practices from the center to the periphery and hence a clear epistemological hierarchy.
The panel proposed by the Herder-Institute (Germany) and the IMF-CSIC (Spain) would like to question this assumption. In order to do so we will focus on the exchanges in the areas of science, technology, medicine and urban planning between the emerging cities of borderlands such as Southern and Eastern Europe. How did knowledge but also agents and practices “travel” between emerging national and regional centers such as Budapest, Tallinn, Lemberg, Lisbon, Athens or Barcelona?
The question is based on the hypothesis that these emerging or “second” cities were practical enough to turn to each other in order to solve the similar problems they were facing in their urban development. It will be crucial to highlight not only the dialectic interplay of national visions and desires (of aspiring nation states) and the internationalization of science and knowledge transfer in the first globalization around 1900, but also to reconstruct the interurban network that existed between them.
Due to this, the session will pay a special attention paid to engineering sciences in the case studies, which played an important role in the modernization of the architectural and infrastructural system of the emerging cities in the late 19th and early 20th century. The goal of this session is thus twofold: it will not only compare these emerging cities, but also try to exemplify the practices, strategies and agents of the interurban network.

To submit a paper proposal, please create a user account on the conference management system https://eauh2016.net/programme/call-for-papers/ and upload your abstract (max. 300 words) to Session S27.
The deadline for paper proposals is October 31, 2015.
We will inform you by December 15 about the acceptance of your proposal.