Last week our team members participated in the international conference of historical sciences in Poznań. These congresses have been organised by the International Committee of Historical Sciences in regular – usually five-year – intervals for more than 120 years. The conference in Poznań was originally planned for 2020, but due to the epidemic of Covid-19 it was postponed until this year. This conference was for the very first time held in a hybrid format – some participants were present, others were on-line.
The first speakers from our team were Alice Velková and Věra Slováková. In a joint session on stepfamilies, organized by Gabriela Erdélyi and Lyndan Warner, they presented our project and results on remarriage and stepfamilies of deputies and officials. Associated historical organizations also found a place at the conference. Traditionally, these include the International Commission of Historical Demography, which was represented on several panels. One of them, chaired by the organization's outgoing president Ioan Bolovan, also featured Alice Velková and Martin Klečacký in a panel on mixed families. Martin Klečacký highlighted the methodological problems of studying inter-ethnic marriages, especially with regard to determining the nationality of individuals living in the Czech lands in the 19th century, and Alice Velková followed up with a paper containing several case studies of married couples from different ethnic backgrounds. Another important organization whose events our team members regularly attend was the International Commission for the History of Representative and Parliamentary Institutions. In a panel organized by Maria Sofia Corciulo and Mario di Napoli, Judith Pál and Vlad Popovici compared the political role and public image of the Hungarian and Romanian parliaments before and after the First World War.
The conference included meetings of international organizations of historians, including the International Commission of Historical Demography. During this meeting members of this organisation voted a new board, including the principal investigator of our project, Alice Velková. The organisation will be led by Evelien Walhoutz of Leiden University for the next five years.
After two long years when similar events could not take place due to the epidemic, this conference was a great opportunity to meet in person and share the latest research. The hybrid format seemed to be the ideal option for those who could not come to Poznań, but it has proved to have its limits, as it cannot achieve the immediacy of on-the-spot discussions. Hopefully, in the future, historians will get used to travelling to conferences again, as the experience of getting to know each other in person is irreplaceable.
