The Max Weber Network Eastern Europe (MWNO) Georgia branch office, in cooperation with the Turpanjian Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) at the American University of Armenia (AUA) is hosting an international conference and calling for papers on Women\u2019s Education, Careers, and Social Change in the Russian and Ottoman Empires and Beyond. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
About the Topic<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, women\u2019s access to education and professional opportunities remained uneven across the Russian and Ottoman Empires. At the same time, growing opportunities for study abroad created new pathways of mobility linking minority communities with educational centers in Switzerland, Germany, France, and elsewhere in Western Europe. The conference examines women\u2019s access to education, educational mobility, professional opportunities, and the social debates surrounding these processes by focusing on national and confessional minorities, including Armenian, Georgian, Jewish, Polish, and other groups. It covers the period from the 1860s to the 1920s, encompassing both the final decades of the empires and the profound political and social transformations that followed the First World War.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Women\u2019s Education, Careers, and Social Change in the Russian and Ottoman Empires and Beyond, 1860s\u20131920s<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The historiography of women\u2019s education has increasingly approached educational mobility as a socially embedded process shaped by social networks, linguistic and cultural adaptation, admission regulations, and the circulation of ideas, practices, and professional models. Although this field has expanded considerably in recent decades, national and confessional minorities have often been subsumed within broader imperial categories, leaving group-specific patterns of educational mobility, professional opportunities, and participation in public life insufficiently differentiated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Adopting a cross-regional and comparative perspective, the conference seeks to explore the visibility and invisibility of female actors in educational, professional, and public life. We invite proposals addressing women\u2019s education, educational mobility, professional opportunities, and public debates across ethnic, national, religious, and imperial boundaries. Comparative and transimperial perspectives, as well as biographical, microhistorical, and prosopographical approaches, are especially welcome, as are papers based on ego-documents, correspondence, autobiographical writings, institutional records, student publications, periodicals, and quantitative sources.<\/p>\n\n\n\n By bringing into dialogue research on women\u2019s education, educational mobility, knowledge transfer, and professional opportunities among national and confessional minorities, the conference aims to contribute to gender history, the history of education, migration studies, intellectual history, and the history of knowledge. Possible topics include, but are not limited to:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Submission Guidelines<\/strong> <\/p>\n\n\n\n The conference invites proposals for 20-minute papers, and abstracts should be 250\u2013300 words, and include a short biographical note of no more than 100 words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Important Dates:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Abstract Submission Deadline: August 10, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Notification of Acceptance: August 31, 2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n The conference will take place from December 3-4 2026<\/strong>, at AUA<\/p>\n\n\n\n Send Applications to:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n Arpine.Maniero@collegium-carolinum.de<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n naira.sahakyan@aua.am<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n