All posts by boerries

Recently published: article on Galicia’s hybrid culture

This article investigates the complex interplay of cultures in Habsburg Galicia, a region marked by its diverse linguistic, religious, and ethnic makeup. It focuses on cultural practices and suggests understanding multilingualism, overarching tropes, and intersecting identities as a form of cultural hybridity. As Galician culture was more than agglutinating several national cultures, this article suggests narrating its history as a plurale tantum.

Link to the open access article: Börries Kuzmany, “Hybrydowość kulturowa w przestrzeniach wielokulturowych. Historie kultury galicyjskiej [Cultural Hybridity in Multicultural Regions: Histories of Galician Culture]“, In: Krakowskie Pismo Kresowe 16 (2024), 13-70

Book launch “Accomodating National Diversity” at the University of Graz

On 21 November my recent monograph Accomodating National Diversity was launched at the University of Graz.

Link to the event.

This book explores the practice of non-territorial autonomy, a concept based on collective rights and used to address national diversity within a single state. It examines its strands of development and the processes of transfer in the Habsburg monarchy and Russia, connecting them to processes in the interwar period. The flexible instrument was able to adapt to different political and ideological frameworks.

Link to: Börries Kuzmany, Vom Umgang mit nationaler Vielfalt. Eine Geschichte der nicht-territorialen Autonomie in Europa. Berlin, De Gruyter 2024 (open access)

Job call for the research project “Non-Ukrainians in Revolutionary Ukraine”

Analysing the political, cultural, and socio-economic agency of non-Ukrainians in Ukraine from a transnational perspective is at the core of this project. The study focuses primarily on Poles, Jews, and Russians, the numerically and historically most relevant nationalities, but will also examine Germans, Greeks, Belarusians, Czechs, and Moldovans. The project’s research questions are structured in five larger thematic clusters: the analysis of in-group transformations among non-Ukrainians, non-Ukrainians’ interactions with state authorities, non-Ukrainians’ relations with co-nationals outside Ukraine, the interactions among non-Ukrainians themselves, and the ways in which non-Ukrainians have experienced violence.

For more information on the project, please refer to the project website.

The NURU project invites prospective candidates to join this collaborative four-years project. The Warsaw research team calls for two position (1 PhD, 1 Post-Doc) and the Vienna team four one (1 PhD):

  1. Nationalities inhabiting the wider regions adjacent to the Black Sea (PhD position Vienna)
  2. Levels, degrees, and combinations of cooperation between non-Ukrainian nationalities (open rank PostDoc/PhD Warsaw)
  3. The disintegration of the “triune people”: Belarusians and Russians in their relationship with Ukrainians (open rank PhD/PostDoc Warsaw)

Click here for the detailed job advertisement.

Recently published book: Accomodating National Diversity. A History of Non-Territorial Autonomy

This book explores the practice of non-territorial autonomy, a concept based on collective rights and used to address national diversity within a single state. It examines its strands of development and the processes of transfer in the Habsburg monarchy and Russia, connecting them to processes in the interwar period. The flexible instrument was able to adapt to different political and ideological frameworks.

Link to: Börries Kuzmany, Vom Umgang mit nationaler Vielfalt. Eine Geschichte der nicht-territorialen Autonomie in Europa. Berlin, De Gruyter 2024 (open access)

Link to the invitation to the book launch taking place on 26 April 2024

Habilitation for Modern and East European History

Börries Kuzmany has successfully defended his habilitation thesis entitled “Vom Umgang mit nationaler Vielfalt. Ein Geschichte der nicht-territorialen Autonomie in Europa” (in English: Accomodating National Diversity. A History of Non-Territorial Auotnomy in Europe).

Recently published: An entangled history of a migration scandal in the late Habsburg Empire

Migrants have become a focus for research, while the people who enabled their movement have received not the same attention. By analysing a family network of migration agents spread-out in various parts of the Habsburg Empire, this paper brings together the micro and macro perspectives of overseas migration from and via Central Europe. The paper investigates the years preceding the First World War when emigration from Austria-Hungary and those involved became the object of scandal. The imperial War Ministry and several newspapers attacked a newcomer to the transatlantic migration business, the Canadian Pacific Railway Company, and several hundred migration agents for illegally enhancing the emigration of Austro-Hungarian men who had not yet fulfilled their military service. This paper sketches out the different layers of an entangled history. These entanglements included divergent interests and corruption among ministries in Austria-Hungary, political animosities in the Habsburg province of Galicia, competing international steamship trusts, settlement policies for Canada’s sparsely populated territories, and diplomatic and public resentment in the British Empire over the alleged unfair treatment of a Canadian company abroad.

Die Auswanderungsaffäre von 1913/14, oder: Kapeller im Kriminal. In: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 71/1 (2023), 83–111. [The Emigration Affair of 1913/14, or: Kapeller Behind Bars]

Published in a special issue in honour of Andreas Kappeler’s 80th birthday: Jahrbücher für Geschichte Osteuropas 71/1 (2023).