Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena

Professor Diana Mishkova

Fellow Diana Mishkova

January - June & October - December 2015
Mail mishkova(at)cas(dot)bg

2000- present: Director of the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia
2000-2005: Associate Professor in Modern and Contemporary History of Southeastern Europe, Department of Southeast-European History (Faculty of History), Sofia University
1988-2000: Senior Assistant Professor in Modern and Contemporary History of Southeastern Europe, Department of Southeast-European History (Faculty of History), Sofia University
Selected Fellowships: Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin (1999; 2014); Collegium Budapest (2005); Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna (2000); Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, Washington (1994)
Visiting/Guest Professor: University of Fribourg, Switzerland; University of Athens, Greece; University of Crete, Greece; University of Uppsala, Sweden; Pittsburgh University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA; University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, USA.

Research Project at the Kolleg

Spatial Configurations in East-Central Europe in the 20th Century
The project will explore the spatial imageries East Central European intellectuals and academics have operated with since the turn of the nineteenth century. This implies, firstly, taking into account the spatial embedment of temporal terms (like development, progress, delay) and the historicization and politicization of spatial terms (east, west, north, south, centre, periphery, borderlands). It also involves looking into various modes of spatialization: territorial vs. non-territorial (e.g. ‘cultural-lingusitic’- Slavic Europe); alternative spatial configurations to the national space (e.g. federalist or pan-ideologies; trans- or supranational configurations); the conceptualization of ‘liminal’ spaces (as captured by notions or metaphors like ‘bridge’, ‘in-betweenness’, ‘cultural synthesis’); and the discourses of othering through spatialization (Orientalism, Occidentalism, Balkanism, etc.). The contestations and semantic shifts implicated in the crystallization of these spaces are the third direction of research.
Methodologically the project implies taking into consideration: (i) Entanglements and mutual reinforcement, but sometimes also disjunctions and counterpoising of external and internal spatial constructions as well as between political and scholarly regional representations; (ii) The relational character of spatial constructions (each region being defined in view of another one), implying attentiveness to cross-regional conceptualizations; (iii) The relationships and permutation of regional imageries and national agendas; (iv) Divergent maps produced by different disciplinary cultures and epistemological transformations.

Main areas of research

  • modern and contemporary history of Southeastern Europe
  • comparative modernization of Southeast-European societies and the European peripheries 19th – 20th centuries
  • history of modern political ideas
  • European intellectual history
  • historiography and theory of history
  • methodology of comparative (historical) research

Positions and Memberships

  • 2000- present: Director of the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia
  • 2003-2008: Member of the Board of Eminent Scholars, Centre for Democracy and Reconciliation in Southeast Europe, Thessaloniki, Greece.
  • Since 2005: Member of the Editorial Board of Currents of History (Journal of the Institute of Contemporary History, Belgrade, Serbia).
  • Since 2007: Member of the Jury of the Paul Celan Fellowship programme of the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen, Vienna, Austria.
  • 2007-2010: Member of Social Sciences and Humanities Panel (SH6) of the European Research Council.
  • Since 2009: Member of the editorial board of the European Conceptual History book series
  • Since 2010: Member of the Board of International Commission for the History and Theory of Historiography (ICHTH)
  • Since 2011: Member of the Scientific Council of NISE (National movements & Intermediary Structures in Europe) project.
  • Since 2012: Member of International Advisory Board of Historein journal.
  • Since 2014: Member of the editorial board of the East European Politics & Societies

Monographs

Приспособяване на свободата. Модерност-легитимност в Сърбия и Румъния през XIX век. [Domestication of Freedom. Modernity-Legitimacy in Serbia and Romania in the Nineteenth Century], Sofia: Paradigma, 2001.

Edited volumes

Балканският XIX век. Други прошити [The Balkan Nineteenth Century. Other Readings], Sofia: Centre for Advanced Study Sofia & RIVA Publishers, 2006 (in Bulgarian) (including editorial chapter).

We, the People. Politics of National Peculiarity in Southeastern Europe (ed.), Budapest and New York: Central European University Press, 2009.

Българският комунизъм - дебати и интерпретации [Bulgarian Communism - Debates and Interpretations] (co-edited with M. Gruev) Sofia: Centre for Advanced Study and RIVA Publ., 2013

Entangled Histories of the Balkans. Vol.II Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions (co-edited with Roumen Daskalov) Leiden, Boston: Brill, 2014.

"Regimes of Historicity" in Southeastern and Northern Europe: Discourses of Identity and Temporality, 1890-1945 (co-edited with Balázs Trencsényi and Marja Jalava), London and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014.

Discourses of Collective Identity in Central and Southeast Europe (1789-1945). Texts and Commentaries. vol. 4: Anti-Modernism: Radical Revisions of Collective Identity (co-edited with Marius Turda and Balázs Trencsényi), Budapest, New York: Central European University Press, 2014.

Articles

"Symbolic Geographies and Visions of Identity: A Balkan Perspective", European Journal of Social Theory, SAGE, 11(2), 2008, 237-256. "What Is in Balkan History? Spaces and Scales in the Tradition of Southeast-European Studies", Southeastern Europe (Brill), 34/1, 2010, 55-86. "Liberalism and Tradition in the Nineteenth-century Balkans. Toward History and Methodology of Political Transfer", East European Politics and Society 26/4 (2012), 668-692.

"Politics of Regionalist Science: Southeastern Europe as a Supranational Space in Late Nineteenth - Mid-twentieth Century Academic Projects," East Central Europe, 39 (2012), 1-38.

"Balkan Liberalisms: Historical Routes of a Modern Ideology", in Roumen Daskalov and Diana Mishkova (eds.), Entangled Histories of the Balkans. vol.II Transfers of Political Ideologies and Institutions, Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2014, 99-198.

"Regimes of 'Balkan Historicity': The Critical Turn and Regional Time in Studies of the Balkans Before the First World War", in D. Mishkova, B. Trencsényi and M. Jalava (eds.), "Regimes of Historicity" in Southeastern and Northern Europe: Discourses of Identity and Temporality, 1890-1945, London and New York: Palgrave-Macmillan, 2014, 21-42.

The full list of publications can be viewed at: www.cas.bg/en/Prof-Diana-Mishkova.html