CFP: International Conference of the PhD Students in History

Doctoral School “History. Civilization. Culture”
Call for Papers
International Conference of the PhD Students in History
Fourteenth Edition
Local History-Global History: Contemporary Historiographical Challenges
19-20 October 2019
Cluj-Napoca

Having reached its fourteenth edition, the series of annual conferences organized by the Doctoral School “History,Civilization,Culture” of the Babeş-Bolyai University of Cluj remains faithful to its interdisciplinary and multicultural approach. Taking into account your research interests, we would like to invite you to present your work in one of the generously themed sessions we have planned. We believe that autumn is the perfect season for academic debates and taking stock of progress made in ongoing research. We would thus be pleased to welcome you to Cluj, a city known for its diversity and multiculturalism. This is one of the reasons why the conferences of the doctoral school are appreciated in many European universities.

The Doctoral School “History, Civilization, Culture” benefits from a broad chronological span, from Antiquity to the present time and thus accommodates an impressive range of topics within generous thematic areas. Moreover, due to its interdisciplinary perspective it encourages an approach informed by neighboring disciplines, such as anthropology, sociology, ethnology and ethnography, aesthetics, art history, literature, international relations and law. Consequently, attendees would have the opportunity to present work on a broad range of topics related to their PhD research. However, the organizers would like to invite participants to reflect on ways that topics under scrutiny, often of a local or regional nature could be circumscribed to global history and dominant trends in contemporary historiography. Taking last year’s initiative one step further, we would like to turn this meeting of PhD students into an international event and we consequently invite all participants, including Romanians and Hungarians to present papers in English. We strongly believe that this would encourage communication and a lively exchange of ideas with PhD students from other countries.

This year, in view of increasing debates concerning the efficacy and utility of the Bologna system we would like to host a workshop dedicated to PhD programmes, positioned as they are between a quest for academic excellence and the realities of cumbersome bureaucracies. The workshop would include a series of debates on current topics related to the role of PhD studies in contemporary academia and society.

• What did PhD studies represent in the past?
• The use of a PhD - is it worth acquiring one?
• The role of PhD students in universities
• The PhD programme - a third stage of university education or the hotbed of excellence in research? 
• European PhD systems versus American PhD systems
• The role of the PhD in systems of professional validation
• Methodology and approach
• Challenges for PhD students today: financing, mobility, career development
• The perfect mentor versus the perfect PhD student

The organizers are open to other suggestions that are circumscribable to the general theme of the workshop.

Practical details:

The title of the presentation and an abstract of maximum 300 words should be sent to the organizers by September 15th 2019 addressed to gnegustor@gmail.com

Participants will deliver 20 minute presentations followed by 10 minutes of discussion

The organizers will respond to each proposal by September 25th 2019

The costs of accommodation and meals will be the responsibility of the organizers