The Orient-Institut Istanbul and the Georgia Branch Office of the Max Weber Foundation in Tbilisi are jointly organizing a two-day workshop on the everyday life of urban communities in minority position in imperial pasts; on their memory and heritage. We intend to bring together historians and anthropologists to present diverse experiences of ethnic and religious communities in the cities of the Russian and Ottoman empires. Of particular interest to us are the history of the institutions that these communities created to function within the city, their ethnic and religious infrastructure, forms of agency, and their representation in private memory. A separate section shall be devoted to the past of communities no longer present today that nevertheless once played a pronounced role in urban life and whose cultural, artistic, and architectural heritage is still being appreciated and conceptualized both by contemporary residents and outside observers. We encourage an anthropological as well as a historical approach to the study of the past and presence of historical minority communities of imperial cities, while being open to a wide array of different approaches and methodologies employed in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Dates: 12-13 September 2024
Location: Tbilisi, Georgia
Type: in person
Conference language: English

Acceptance decisions will be made by the beginning of March 2024.

Send please your submissions (paper proposal of ca. 300 words and your CV) to the following address by 16 February 2024: info@mws-georgia.org.