The Humboldt University of Berlin warmly invites all interested scholars, students, and members of the public to attend the international conference “Women in Late Socialism: Gender Orders, Agency, and Transnational Entanglements” (17–19 September 2026).
Bringing together researchers from across Europe and beyond, the conference explores women's political subjectivities, bodies and sexualities, socialist internationalism, expertise and knowledge production, as well as ethnic minorities and women's agency in late socialist societies.
Programme
Thursday, September 17
Federal Foundation for the Study of the Communist Dictatorship in Germany (Bundesstiftung Aufarbeitung), Kronenstraße 5, 10117 Berlin
17:00 - 19:00
Keynote Lecture
Francisca de Haan (Central European University, Vienna/International Institute of Social History, Amsterdam)
Women in Late Socialism: A Global Perspective
Friday, September 18
Humboldt University of Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin, room 2095A
9:00 - 10:30 Panel 1. Female Political Subjectivity in Late Socialism: Biographical Perspectives
Chair: Oksana Nagornaia (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Susanne Schattenberg (University of Bremen)
Natalya Gorbanevskaya (1936-2013) or: Why Women Did Not Receive the Noble Prize
Nesa Vrečer (Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana)
Majda Gaspari and Women's Socio-Political Work in 1960s Slovenia
Gordeeva Irina (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam)
Valeria Novodvorskaya and the Soviet Independent Peace Movement in the Late 1980s
10:30 - 11:00 - Coffee break
11:00 - 12:30 Panel 2. Female Bodies, and Sexualities in Late Socialism
Chair: Anna Ivanova (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Veronika Lacinová Najmanová (University of Pardubice)
Educating the Socialist Woman: Contraception, Health Advice and Gender Norms in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia
Anna McEwan (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam)
From Family Planning to Self-Determination? Reproductive Rights and the Shifting Ideologies of the Democratic Women's League of Germany (1970–1990).
Barbora Skalická Doležalová (Charles University, Prague)
Sex Workers in Late Socialist Czechoslovakia: Liminality, Agency, and the Fetishization of Work
15:00 - 16:30
Panel 3. Socialist Internationalism: Women and Transnational Engagements
Chair: Jessica Bock (Digital German Women's Archive)
Ella Rossman (Leibniz Institute for the History and Culture of Eastern Europe, Leipzig)
The World in Our Hands: Socialist Girlhood, Citizenship, and Internationalism at the World Meeting of Young Women
Tatjana Šarić (Croatian State Archives, Zagreb)
Gender Orders in Socialist Internationalism: Yugoslav Medical Missions in Libya
Anna Sidorevich (Center for History of Sciences Po, Paris)
Cold War Sisterhood? Leningrad Feminists and Transnational Feminist Solidarity in the Late 1970s and Early 1980s
Saturday, September 19
Humboldt University of Berlin, Unter den Linden 6, 10117 Berlin, room 2095A
9:00 - 10:30 Panel 4. Expertise, and Female Subjectivity: Women as Objects and Subjects of Knowledge in Late Socialism
Chair: Stefanie Eisenhuth (Leibniz Centre for Contemporary History, Potsdam)
Karolina Siewak (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)
Rethinking the “Women’s Question” in the Countryside. Barbara Tryfan and Gender Expertise in Late Socialist Poland
Nadezhda Beliakova (Bielefeld University)
Women Mediating Religion in Late Socialism: Expertise and Knowledge across the Cold War
Agnieszka Mrozik (Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw)
To Show Girls the Way: Educating Young Polish Women for Modern Socialist Femininity in the Long Sixties and Beyond
10:30 - 11:00 - Coffee break
11:00 - 12:30 Panel 5. Ethnic Minorities and Women’s Agency under Late Socialism
Chair: Priska Komaromi (Humboldt University of Berlin)
Sasha Dimitrova (University of Vienna)
Ordering Emancipation: Knowledge Production and Agency of Muslim Women during Bulgaria’s ‘Revival’ Process (1970s-1980s)
Monika Stachová (Collegium Carolinum, Munich)
„We Are Here for People – Not Vice Versa.“ Slovak Romani Women in State-Socialist Local Politics in the 1970s and 1980s
Helene Henze (Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich)
Invisible Transitions: The Economic Lives of Ethnic German Women in Late Soviet Central Asia
12:30 - closing remarks
Anna Ivanova (HU Berlin), Irina Makhalova (HU Berlin) und Oksana Nagornaia (HU Berlin), femaleagency2026@gmail.com