Czechs and Slovaks migrate to Dundee

The department of history, rated top research department in the faculty of arts and social sciences by the Research Assessment Exercise is hosting a forum of British, Czech and Slovak historians on 18-20 March. This is a new initiative which aims to forge closer links between the UK and the Czech and Slovak republics and provide a fresh basis for joint discussion and research on some controversial historical themes.

The forum was the brainchild of the current Czech ambassador to the UK, Dr Pavel Seifter, himself a former historian who was forced to become a window-cleaner in Czechoslovakia in the repressive decades after 1968. It is organised on the British side by Mark Cornwall of the department of history and Robert Evans of Oxford University with complementary Czech and Slovak committees in Prague and Bratislava.

The British Academy has provided substantial funding for the forum's first conference on 18-20 March. It will take a sensitive subject in the history of east-central Europe - the impact of nationalism and fascism in the era of two world wars - and assess it from a British and Czechoslovakian perspective. The 25 speakers drawn from Slovakia, the Czech Republic, the UK, USA and Germany, include some of the most noted scholars in the field. A lively debate is expected.

For more information see the conference website www.dundee.ac.uk/history or the forum's website ttp://users.ox.ac.uk/~bcsforum

Next Page
Return to April 2002 Contact