The workshop is organized in cooperation with the Willy Brandt Center for German and European Studies (Wroclaw) and will be led by Prof. Dr. Martin Schulze Wessel (Munich), Prof. Dr. Gelinada Grinchenko (Wuppertal) and Prof. Dr. Krzysztof Ruchniewicz (Wroclaw).

The classification of mass crimes as genocide, according to the UN Genocide Convention (1948) has become a political issue today and is claimed by various victim groups. Since 2006, when the Ukrainian Parliament declared the Holodomor as a genocide of the Ukrainian people, Ukraine has confidently sought international ratification of this assessment. Today, during the large-scale war of Russia against Ukraine, the scholars are once again discussing Russian atrocities in Ukraine through the conceptual prism of genocide.

This workshop for German and Ukrainian doctoral students in history and law plans to discuss the topic broadly and in an interdisciplinary and comparative framework with other historical case studies (including, e.g., Armenians, Herero and Nama, Sinti and Roma, Tutsi/Rwanda, Bosniaks/Srebrenica, etc.).

Among other aspects, the organizers wish to discuss the applicability of the concept of genocide in historical and legal scholarship, the historical contexts in which the UN Genocide Convention came into being in the aftermath of WWII and the Holocaust, the scientific and public controversies it has evoked, and whether a future expansion of the term’s definition in the UN Convention is desirable, especially concerning the ongoing war in Ukraine.

The German-Ukrainian Historical Commission invites young researchers to participate in the international workshop in Wroclaw (Poland), where they will have the opportunity to present and discuss their ideas and research projects (e.g. PhD dissertations). The workshop will consist of lectures from specialists in this topic and presentations of the participants’ research projects and their discussion. The workshop program will be announced after the selection of participants.

Overall, the workshop can support up to 10 researchers. The group should be composed, as far as possible, of an equal number of researchers from Ukraine and Germany. The language of the workshop is English. The German-Ukrainian Historical Commission bears the costs for accommodation and meals and will refund the travel expenses.

Applications can be submitted in English with CV, a short motivational letter and an abstract of the research project (max. 300 words) in one PDF-file by May 1, 2023 to following address: duhk@lrz.uni-muenchen.de.

Kontakt

Source: Genocide in History and Law. In: H-Soz-Kult, 02.04.2023, <www.hsozkult.de/event/id/event-135344>.