Keynote: Peripheries at the Centre. A Framework of Comparison.

Presentation (2021, June 17)

Presenter: Peripheries at the Centre. Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe

Presentation (2021, June 16)

Introduction: Webinar by Dr. Piero-D. Galloro within the framework of "FLUXUS – Série de conférences au sujet des migrations et des frontières dans l’espace de la Grande Région".

Presentation (2021, May 12)

Panel Organiser: Peripheries at the Centre: Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe

Scientific Conference (2021, April 17)

Panel Organizer: Changing Border, Defining Identity. A European Perspective of Shaping Children's Role in Modern Society

Scientific Conference (2021, March 30)

Chair: Abandoned, Orphaned & Displaced: Histories of Children’s Destitution and Relief

Presentation (2021, March 25)

Children, Young People, and Borders: A Multidisciplinary Outlook

in Journal of Borderlands Studies (2021), 36(2),

Peripheries at the Centre. Borderland Schooling in Interwar Europe.

Book published by Berghahn (2021)

Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in which fellow citizens often differed dramatically from ... [more ▼]

Following the Treaty of Versailles, European nation-states were faced with the challenge of instilling national loyalty in their new borderlands, in which fellow citizens often differed dramatically from one another along religious, linguistic, cultural, or ethnic lines. Peripheries at the Centre compares the experiences of schooling in Upper Silesia in Poland and Eupen, Sankt Vith, and Malmedy in Belgium — border regions detached from the German Empire after the First World War. It demonstrates how newly configured countries envisioned borderland schools and language learning as tools for realizing the imagined peaceful Europe that underscored the political geography of the interwar period. [less ▲]

1918, 1945, 1989: Childhood in Times of Political Transformation: Part I

in Journal of Modern European History (2021), 19(2),

Secondary school principals and liminality in Polish Upper Silesia (1919-1939)

in Journal of Modern European History (2021), 19(2), 206-221

Establishing and implementing rules that would teach young people to become active citizens became a crucial technique for turning those spots on the map of Europe whose sovereignty had shifted after ... [more ▼]

Establishing and implementing rules that would teach young people to become active citizens became a crucial technique for turning those spots on the map of Europe whose sovereignty had shifted after World War I into lived social spaces. This article analyses how principals of borderland secondary schools negotiated transformation in Polish Upper Silesia with the help of Arnold Van Gennep’s notion that a shift in social statuses possessed a spatiality and temporality of its own. The article asks whether and how school principals were called on to offer elite training that would make Polish Upper Silesia more cohesive with the rest of Poland in terms of the social origins of pupils and the content of the history curriculum. In addition, it examines the extent to which borderland school principals accepted, refuted, or helped to shape that responsibility. The social origins of pupils are detected through a quantitative analysis of recruitment figures and the profiles of pupils’ parents. This analysis is combined with an exploration of how school principals provided a meaningful explanation of the recent past (World War I and the Silesian Uprisings). The article demonstrates that while school principals were historical actors with some room to make their own decisions when a liminal space was created, changed, and abolished, it was ultimately a priest operating in their shadows who possessed more possibilities to become a master of ceremonies leading elite education through its rites of passage. [less ▲]