The WG meetings were held right before the Summer this year, here is an account of what happened at each WG meeting.
WG1 meeting at the Croatian State Archive
27-28 June 2022, Zagreb
by Marie Ruiz
The meeting was organized by Tatjana Šarić, to whom all WG1 members are grateful. Despite the regretted in-person absence of WG1 leader Katelin Parsons and keynote Donna Gabaccia, the meeting was a success thanks to Tatjana’s hosting skills. Hosted in the magnificent state archives, it was the perfect location to advance WG1’s project on primary sources on women’s migrants across Europe.
Warmly welcomed by the Directors of the Archive as well as the team of archivists, the meeting started with a fruitful session of academic presentations. Katelin with us on screen for the whole meeting.
Brigitte Le Normand opened the workshop with a presentation entitled “Yugoslav women in Western Europe and work in the ‘gastarbeiter’ heydey: A research agenda”, and she was followed by Katelin Parsons on “Finding migrant women’s writing in Canada through the Fragile Heritage Project”. Tatjana Šarić then talked about “Research of archival records on migrant women in the Croatian State Archives in Zagreb” and the sessions ended with Alexander Schunka‘s insights on finding women in the archives. This fruitful workshop raised questions such as women’s absence from the archives as well as the fact that their voices are often filtered, which lay ground for discussions during the second day of the meeting’s round table.
The first day ended with a fascinating visit of the Croatian State Archive, and privilege access to some of the preciously kept treasures of the archive which holds an impressive collection of early material such as the largest book held in the archives, a medieval book of complaints.
Our second day was marked by fruitful discussions leading to structuring the infrastructure of our catalogue of primary sources. It ended with a very interesting guided visit of Zagreb, generously organized by our host and the Croatian State Archive.
The Croatian State Archive have made us the honour to publish an account of WEMov’s visit to their institution, available here. All our thanks to Tatjana and the archive’s team for their warm welcome, WG1’s first in-person meeting was unforgettable!
WG2 meeting at the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences
27-28 June 2022, Prague
At the first COST in-person annual meeting in Budapest the WG2 (Memory and Identity) decided to hold its workshop and meeting in the GP2 in Prague. This year, on June 27 and 28, the event was hosted by the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences at its Academic Conference Centre with two adjacent green courtyards.
The WG2 team with the guest speaker Jessica Cronshagen
Upon the official welcome by the host’s representatives, WG2 guest speaker Dr. Jessica Cronshagen (Carl von Ossietzky University Oldenburg) opened the two-day programme with her lecture on « Identity and Memory in the Correspondence of 18th Century Female Missionaries of the Moravian Church in Surinam » and inspired a vivid interdisciplinary discussion.
The guest speaker Jessica Cronshagen
The subsequent workshop « Transcultural Memory of Female Migration – Concepts, Practices, Case Studies » was introduced by WG2 leader Veronika Čapská, with Bénédicte Miaymoto serving as the chair. The programme entailed the presentations by Maria Amor Barros del Rio, Igor Lyman and Victoria Konstantinova, Fiona Eva Bakas and Pauliina Räsänen. In the evening the WG2 team held dinner in the Nam Viet restaurant with the Belarussian female émigré scholar and human rights activist Veronika Marková.
On Tuesday morning, June 28, the WG2 team gathered for its in-person meeting. We discussed visualization and data problems on our map of migrant women landmarks, possible systems of future archiving, plans to prepare downloadable walking tour maps and future joint COST co-publications.
Fiona Eva Bakas presenting her paper
The final highlight of the programme was our first walking tour (after lengthy Covid 19 pandemic restrictions). We have explored Prague through the lenses of gender and migration history and discussed the marginal place of memory markers which commemorate migrant women in the public space.
WG2 group on the walking tour
The map of our walking tour
We took a comparative approach, comparing our map of migrant women landmarks with the memoryscape shaped by the national historical master narrative and with the stumbling stones memorial project.
WG3 meeting in Cyprus
WG3 met in Cyprus at the end of our annual meeting and had Umut Erel for keynote. Next in-person meeting will be held in Slovenia.
WG4 meeting at the University of Antonio de Nebrija – Global Campus
30 June – 1 July 2022, Madrid
The working meeting of WG4 took place on 30 June – 1 July 2022 in Madrid at the University of Antonio de Nebrija – Global Campus. We discussed cooperation on performances, the work done so far in depth and made both theoretical (categories and classifications) and methodological decisions. We also made practical decisions on how to proceed. Solutions to film practices and processes with Beri Shalmashi, our guest speaker, was a valuable input to our work. Overall, it was great to be in Madrid and be able to discuss our work together in person and make strong informal networking in our spare time.
