GW4 Initiative: And the Wall(s) Came Tumbling Down

On 30th October Heiko Feldner, Monika Hennemann and Jan Berendse from founded the ‘GW4 Network for the Study of Socialist and Post-Socialist Europe’ in conjunction with colleagues from partner institutions in Bristol, Exeter and Bath.

This will serve as a lively interdisciplinary platform for collaborative research and teaching projects in a wide range of GW4 departments and disciplines, including modern languages, literature and translation studies as well as European cinema, history and music. Together, they will explore the cultural, intellectual and historical development of socialist and post-socialist Europe from the mid-twentieth century onwards. All colleagues with research and teaching interests in this area are warmly invited to join this interdisciplinary forum.

The first Cardiff-based events are coming soon: on 11 December, Monika Hennemann hosts an undergraduate workshop on ‘Remembering the Victims of the Berlin Wall’ taught by historian David Clarke from the University of Bath, followed by a lecture entitled ‘The Politics of Victimhood: Remembering the German Democratic Republic’.

May 2014 will see a one-day workshop on the topic of “Ideologies”, while in autumn 2014 Heiko Feldner and Fabio Vighi from our German and Italian Departments are organizing the cross-disciplinary conference ‘The Fall of the Wall: History, Theory, Event’ to mark the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall.