Transformative Podcast

What does the Non-Aligned Movement look like on a plate? Starting with a series of informal dinners in Rijeka and expanding into various events and workshops, Kevin Kenjar (University of Rijeka) pays homage to the...

The Routledge Handbook of 1989 and the Great Transformation analyzes the pivotal year of 1989 and the transformation processes that resulted from a historical perspective. It brings research done over the past five...

Ever since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Communist Party of China (CCP) has used the historical memory of WWII to legitimize its rule. Exactly how the historical conflict gets framed, and...

What does football tell us about Ukraine's political and economic transformations after the collapse of the Soviet Union? In this episode, Kateryna Chernii (ZZF Potsdam) tells Jelena Đureinović (RECET) about football in...

In this episode, Hannah Käthler (RECET) talks to RECET's Founding Director Philipp Ther, whose newest book Der Klang der Monarchie (Suhrkamp, 2025) tells the history of the Austro-Hungarian Empire through the prism of...

Since the beginning of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Ukrainian men of fighting age have been subject to a wartime draft. Yet many have chosen to flee the country, often risking perilous border...

In the aftermath of World War I, what used to be the Habsburg Empire split up into several nation states. But where to draw a border between the new Austrian Republic and the Hungarian nation state? In this episode...

What is postsocialism and how has it been experienced around Eastern Europe? Ambiguously, according to Jill Massino, the editor, with Marcus Wien, of a new volume on the topic: Everyday Postsocialism in Eastern Europe...

Is there socialist tropical medicine? Why is it important to write state-socialist Eastern Europe in the global history of medicine after 1945? In this episode, Bogdan Iacob tells Jelena Đureinović (RECET) about...

Did Eastern Bloc states “aid and abet” terrorism, as US politicians like Ronald Reagan charged? Declassified archives in postsocialist Europe reveal a much more complicated story, as Daniela Richterova (King’s College...

Do historians have a responsibility to engage in public and political discussions? How can one balance the role of a public intellectual, an activist and a scholar? How can scholars rise to the occasion in the face of a...

In this episode of the Transformative Podcast, Radka Šustrová (RECET) speaks with historian and human rights scholar Steven L. B. Jensen. Drawing on his recent keynote at the rountable titled “European Strategies for...

What does social justice mean in a European context—and how has that meaning evolved through dictatorship, democracy, and division? In this episode of the Transformative Podcast, Radka Šustrová speaks with historians...

This episode captures (the beginning of) a conversation between cultural studies scholar Magda Szcześniak (University of Warsaw) and historian Jan Tomasz Gross (emeritus, Princeton University) who – while studying...

To what extent were Soviet engagements with the Third World characterized by solidarity during the Cold War? And to what extent did these same engagements conceal imperial ambitions? In this episode of the...