1st Workshop
“Learning from History: The Philosophies of Historiography and the Historical Sciences” (Event–Public), Ostrava, CZ
27/11/2026–30/11/2026
The first workshop of the project will be held at the University of Ostrava, the Czech Republic from November 27 to November 30, 2026 (with talks and presentations during two full days). The main topic of the workshop will be “What Can be Learned from History: Philosophical Reflections”. During the workshop, the most important issues regarding the nature and limitations of “learning from history” will be discussed. The focus will be on the concepts of historical precedents and analogies. The following questions will be addressed. What are historical precedents? What can precedents teach about the events they precede? What makes one historical episode analogous to another? What can analogies teach? These and related issues will be examined in detail and, moreover, conclusions and findings of the workshop will be used for teaching purposes during the summer school organized later in Ruzomberok. Thus, the first workshop will provide a necessary theoretical and philosophical background to be utilized later during the summer school. Scholars from partner institutions involved in the project – Ostrava, Ruzomberok, Katowice – as well as 4 invited guests will participate at the workshop. At least 4 talks from the workshop will be recorded and uploaded online (to Youtube or a similar platform) for public outreach. The primary target group will be scholars and university students but the event will be promoted via social media, PhilEvents etc. and open to wider public.
2nd Workshop
“Central European Examples of Learning from History” (Event–Public), Katowice, PL
14/04/2027–16/04/2027
The second workshop will be held at the University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland from April 14 to April 16, 2027 (with presentations during one full day open to public and one internal project session). Scholars from partner institutions involved in the project – Ostrava, Ruzomberok, Katowice – will participate and present during the workshop. The focus will be on “Central European Examples of Learning from History”. The goal of the workshop will be to apply philosophical and theoretical insights from the first workshop on learning from history into concrete historiographic examples and to prepare a list of historiographic case studies that will later be discussed with students in the summer school in Ruzomberok. Another goal of the second workshop will be to methodologically and didactically prepare for the summer school. To organize a summer school that is productive and appealing to university students, the project team will discuss during the internal session of the workshop in Katowice what methods to use, which examples (case studies) to present to students and other practical issues. The primary target group of a part of the workshop (the part with presentations of case studies on April 15, 2027) will be scholars and university students. The internal program of the workshop (morning session on April 16, 2027) focusing on preparation of the summer school will be limited to the project team members. The public part will be promoted via social media etc.
Summer School
“What Can be Learned from History: Theory and Case Studies from Central Europe” (Event–Public), Ruzomberok, SK
22/08/2027–28/08/2027
The final event of the project will be the summer school organized at the Catholic University in Ruzomberok, Slovakia in August 2027. Both teachers and students will arrive on Sunday and depart on Saturday, thus, there will be 5 full days devoted to the talks, seminars and consultations with students, so the number of hours will allow the students to receive credit for the course. The summer school will offer a chance to discuss some of the crucial issues from the philosophies of history and historiography that relate to the topic of “learning from history”. It will draw on the two previous workshops and focus both on theoretical aspects of this topic and on applied examples from the history of Central Europe. The crucial concepts of history, historiography, historical precedents and analogies, historiographic reasoning, and so on will be examined and discussed. A special focus will be on historiographic case studies from Central European history to give students an opportunity to explore how in the region of current Visegrad countries history influences us and gives us a chance (not) to repeat it. The plan is to have 9 teachers who would offer lectures, seminars and consultations with about 18 students from V4 countries. These Visegrad countries students (MA and PhD students) will have the whole program covered from the project but we plan to promote the summer school also among university students from outside of Visegrad and offer at least 5 spots for self-funded students..