Research Center for the History of Transformations
@recetvienna
Transformations in Central & Eastern Europe and beyond. Labor, migration, reform politics, social movements, and culture. Proud part of Uni Vienna.
Join us tomorrow for Seminar with Prof. Alice Lovejoy (University of Minnesota) on „Tales of Militant Chemistry: The Film Factory in a Century of War“
What can the lens of football tell us about the transformation years in East Germany? In this episode of our Transformative Podcast, historian and journalist Jan Mohnhaupt and @jelenadj.bsky.social (RECET) reflect upon this question.
… and the award ceremony of this year's Transformation Studies Student Award going to Gunnar Christian Blix for his outstanding Master’s thesis “Sør-Afrika i våre hender!“ The Norwegian Confederation of Trade Unions and the struggle against apartheid in South Africa 1973-87”.
Some glimpses of yesterday's festival opening, ft. a tour-de-force through 700000 years of labor history by Prof. Jan Lucassen (IISH Amsterdam) …
Join us on June 9-11 for three days of RECET Festival, this year on "Transformations of Labor"! Panels, keynotes, music and off-campus events await. More information on recet.at/festival
New Transformative Podcast out! Our researcher @jelenadj.bsky.social talks to Priska Komaromi (@humboldtuni.bsky.social) about her research on Sex Tourism in Socialist Hungary
Delighted to welcome Prof. Paul Betts (@ox.ac.uk) for a Transformative Seminar on "Broken Clocks and Shadowy Transitions: The Legacy of 1989 for Our Time" - Join us this Thursday on Campus
Join us next Thursday for a seminar offering a multi-dimensional reading of kiosks as both material artefacts and social infrastructures, reflecting Albania’s transition from isolation to global interconnectedness (ft. Robert Pichler @oeaw.bsky.social).
Join us on Monday for a RECET Lecture with Prof. Pun Ngai (Lingnan University) – Infrastructural Power of Labor: The Making of the Working Class
How might we capture historical events like war and revolution from street level? In this episode of the Transformative Podcast, Claire Morelon (University of Manchester) tells Rosamund Johnston (RECET) …
“The story of work is to a great extent the history of humankind,” writes historian Jan Lucassen in the introduction to his monumental Story of Work. “But what exactly do we mean by work?”
Join us this Thursday for our next Transformative Salon. This time with Prof. Besnika Pula (Virginia Tech). The digital age is conventionally narrated as a Western story, one in which liberal capitalism's institutional flexibility enabled the technological transformation that …
How have the Croats in Argentina preserved their identity, memory, and community? How have they transmitted it across generations to this day? Following the collapse of the fascist Independent State of Croatia (1941–1945), …
Join us this Friday for a book presentation of the @routledgebooks.bsky.social Handbook of Contemporary Belarus with its editor Aliaksei Kazharski (@charlesuni.cuni.cz), @sofiebedford.bsky.social, Maria Katarzyna Prenner (Uni Graz), moderated by Wolfgang Mueller.
Unsere Partnerorganisation Verein "1989" schreibt zum zweiten Mal einen Nachwuchspreis in historischer Transformationsforschung aus!
Join us this Thursday for a Transformative Seminar with Dr. Jan Rybak (@weareceu.bsky.social) on "World Revolution and National Homeland: Conflicts over Jewish Liberation, 1917–1920."
Join us today at 14:30 at Alte Kapelle (@univie.ac.at) – we will discuss the @routledgebooks.bsky.social Handbook of 1989 and the Great Transformation with F. Bösch (@zzfpotsdam.bsky.social), Kateřína Lišková (@czechacademy.bsky.social), Besnik Pula (Virginia Tech) and Angela Romano (@unibo.it)
In this newest episode of our #TransformativePodcast, Alexandra Ghiț (@LeibnizGWZO) focuses on domestic servants, social workers, and users of welfare in interwar Bucharest to argue that “histories of welfare provision are histories of work, and histories of work are histories …
Join us next Thursday for our Transformative Salon – we will try to anticipate the Hungarian general election, asking whether the country faces regime change (or not). Discussants: Péter Krekó, Alexander Etkind (@weareceu.bsky.social), Eszter Kováts (@univie.ac.at), moderation: János M. Kovács
New #TransformativePodcast out – What does the Non-Aligned Movement look like on a plate? Starting with a series of informal dinners in Rijeka and expanding into various events and workshops, Kevin Kenjar (University of Rijeka) pays homage to the Non-Aligned Movement …
… transformation processes that resulted from a historical perspective. It takes the events of that momentous year as a pivot to explore longer-term processes of economic, social, political, and cultural transformation linked to the rise of neoliberalism and globalization.
In the newest episode of the #TransformativePodcast, our researcher Rosamund Johnston discusses the @routledgebooks.bsky.social Handbook of 1989 and the Great Transformation with co-editor @japvie81.bsky.social. This cutting-edge collection of essays analyzes the pivotal year of 1989 and the …
Join us this Thursday for a #TransformativeSeminar on "Book Presentation: Russia against Ukraine. Russian Political Mythology and the War on Ukrainian Identity" with @shekhovtsov.substack.com
You can now pre-order the newest book by our researcher Dr. Sheng Peng on "Jimmy Carter and China. Multilateral Competition in the Global Cold War" (forthcomng in March 26 with @columbiaup.bsky.social).
Join us on Thursday, Jan 15, 2026, for this year's first #TransformativeSeminar with Zbig Wojnowski (St Antony's College, Oxford) on "The Roots of Entrepreneurship in Late Soviet Show Business: Profit, Professional Pride, and Responsibility"
The new year starts with a new #TransformativePodcast episode! Our Scientific Director @japvie81.bsky.social talks to Markéta Bajgerová Verly about China's Everchanging History of WWII!
You missed our December Transformative Salon with Prof. Kristen Ghodsee and @magdalenabaran.bsky.social on "What has Socialism Done for Women?"? Find it on YouTube!
Glad to see a Polish translation of the Shipyard's Collective (@philippther.bsky.social et al.) "In the Storms of Transformation. Two Shipyards between Socialism and the EU" ("In den Stürmen der Transformation") come out with Wydawnictwo Uniwersytetu Gdańskiego.
What does football tell us about Ukraine's political and economic transformations after the collapse of the Soviet Union? In this episode of our Transformative Podcast, Kateryna Chernii (@zzfpotsdam.bsky.social) tells @jelenadj.bsky.social (RECET) about football in the Soviet Union and Ukraine, …
We are proud to announce a new RECET project related book! In November 2025, the edited volume on Polonia firms, 'Wyłom w Systemie? Firmy Polonijne w PRL' (Scholar, Warszawa 2025), ed. by Jerzy Kochanowski (University of Warsaw) and Lars Fredrik Stöcker (@univie.ac.at) was released!