About GRACEH

Central European University, Budapest (History Department; Department of Medieval Studies; Pasts Inc. Center for Historical Studies)
European University Institute, Florence (Department of History and Civilization)
Berliner Kolleg für Vergleichende Geschichte Europas, Berlin
European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire
East Central Europe/L’Europe du Centre-Est. Eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift

Graduate Conferences in European History a collaboration

GRACEH is the collaboration of several European graduate schools in history and some other institutional partners in launching and managing a series of annual conferences, with the aim of promoting the professional training of young historians through a regular forum of trans-national and inter-generational discussion on some of the most pertinent topics in contemporary historical studies.

By their conception, their underlying principles, their structure and many other features, the partner institutions, CEU, EUI and BKVGE are conceived as trendsetters in European historical studies. All three departments actively participate in recent historiographical and theoretical debates, apply in their teaching a rich plurality of views, and aim to surmount national perspectives on history, to place national historiographies in a distinct European perspective and to integrate them in a broader methodological and thematic context. Developing professional ties among these established centres with an outlook on the social sciences and the humanities will encourage a new type of academic socialization for young scholars from the “old” and the “new” Europe and beyond.

After having had a series of successful bilateral conferences, the three research centres decided to start a new project, based on mutual collaboration, but also the involvement of a much wider audience than only their own students: the Graduate Conferences in European History. The initiative of GRACEH is envisaged as a ‘bottom-up’ scheme (encouraged and receiving support from established senior researchers in the field), which involve different generations of Ph.D. students working together and transmitting their organizing experience to their peers. Doctoral students from the three institutions have formed a steering committee, and while relying on advice from faculty members (an "advisory board"), they possess control of and responsibility for the initiative. Naturally, the membership in the steering committee and the organizing tasks are passed down from one generation of students to another, and this practice trains them to be able to build state of the art research on networking, and at the same time link persons, ideas, methods, and approaches. The committee has defined theoretically and methodologically pertinent topics capable of accommodating a broad chronological span but facilitating a dialogue of scholars working in disparate fields. Two reviewed international historical journals of high regard, European Review of History/Revue européenne d’histoire (ERH) and East Central Europe/L’Europe du Centre-Est. Eine wissenschaftliche Zeitschrift (ECE) showed an interest as partners for the publication of the best results of the planned conferences.

Planned conferences from the year 2007:

2007: New histories of politics: Topics, theories, and methods in the history of politics beyond great events and great men (Budapest)
2008: Ruptures and continuities in European history: Periodisations in history, historiography and the history of historiography (Berlin)
2009: Interaction and negotiation: International history in cultural perspective 1600–2000 (Florence)
2010: Comparative and trans-national history of Europe (1600–2000) (Florence)