Dr Machteld Venken

Research project at the Kolleg

During her stay at the Kolleg, Machteld Venken will (1) rework her defended habilitation into a publishable monograph, (2) work on the publications emerging from the Association for Borderland Studies World Conference which she chaired in July 2018, and (3) look for ways to continue her Citizen Science research.

(1) The main insight the habilitation brings forward is that a specific profile of child came into being in the European borderlands situated at the fringes of Prussia (later the German Empire), which switched sovereignty following the Treaty of Versailles. When their home grounds switched state sovereignty after the First World War, borderland children were envisioned to play a crucial role in bringing about the peaceful Europe that representatives at international peace conferences had had in mind. However, the creation of a modern Europe did not solve the question of how to include borderland inhabitants, differing one from another on national, religious, linguistic, cultural and/or ethnic grounds. As a consequence, the borderlands functioned as central places of struggle, whether in terms of political control, identification, or creative cultural production.

(2) After I won an open global BID, I was elected Conference Chair of the Association for Borderlands Studies World Conference 2018, which is the world's largest convention on borders and border-related issues. Under my supervision, the second edition of this quadrennial event took place at the University of Vienna and the Central European University in Budapest from July 10th to 14th, 2018. The organizing theme was Border-Making and its Consequences: Interpreting Evidence from the "post-Colonial" and "post-Imperial" 20th Century (www.abs2018world.com). During my time at the Kolleg, I will work on group publications following the world conference.

(3) The Citizen Science Project ‘Talking Borders. From Local Expertise To Global Exchange’

http://www.univie.ac.at/talkingborders/

The ABS World Conference became a site of scientific investigation itself, where 66 citizen scientists (bachelor students in the humanities from border regions throughout the ex-Habsburg area) met 21 border scholars as equals for a cross-disciplinary (border/citizen science) experiment. The project asked: What do borders mean to border scholars? What do borders mean to young adults from the (ex-) Habsburg area? What new knowledge does a global encounter between citizen scientists and border scholars reveal? The Experiment consists of two aspects. It gathered face-to-face dialogues about the meaning of borders. It also hosts a global digital café for 100 working days, where extracts from the 100 talks will be posted so that people can comment on them. The online page will demonstrate how scientific knowledge on the global meaning(s) of borders is generated.

Main areas of research

European History in the 19th and 20th Century, migration, borders, children, oral history, citizen science

Positions and memberships

• Conference Chair of the Association for Borderlands Studies 2nd World Conference
• Since 08.2012 Initiator and editor of the Peter Lang Book Series (together with Dariusz Stola): Studies in Contemporary History. (6 books published)
• Since 09.2011 Co-founder and member of the editorial board of Tijd-Schrift (a Belgian scientific journal)
• 2009 Author of an expertise paper about Women and Children during World War II (written on the request of the Museum of the Second World War, Gdańsk)

Most important peer reviews:

Journals: Low Countries Historical Review / Memory Studies / Nationalities Papers / Tijdschrift voor Genderstudies

Science bodies: Polish National Science Center / Netherlands E-Science Center

Membership:

- the Association for Borderland Studies

- the Association for Slavic, Eastern European and Eurasian Studies

- Belgische Vereniging voor Nieuwste Geschiedenis – l´Association belge d´Histoire contemporaine

- Cost-Action Citizen Science