The historical period in which we find ourselves has yet to acquire an adequate name. Its defining feature, however, is increasingly apparent: the exhaustion of the modern Western regime of historical time. The grand narrative that especially shaped the post-1989 world—the expectation of liberal democracy’s inevitable expansion, economic convergence, and a shared European future—has not merely faltered. It has revealed the limits of this entire temporal order organized around progress, transition, and the linear relationship between past, present, and future.
Lithuanian Institute of History organizes an Interdisciplinary Symposium “Posthistoricity in Central and Eastern Europe”. The symposium will be held in a hybrid format on September 4th, 2026.
We invite statements of interest from historians, philosophers, political scientists, sociologists, anthropologists, and scholars of memory, media, and technology. Indicative themes include, but are not limited to: regimes of historical time and their exhaustion; futurity and historicity; memory politics and the agency of the past; demodernization and temporal rupture; digital infrastructures and the transformation of anticipation; imagined futures; human experience of current temporal transformations and the theoretical vocabulary of posthistoricity.
Prospective participants are invited to submit statements of interest (200-300 words) for 15-20 min. presentations, together with a short (up to 200 words) biographical note, to arvydas.grisinas@istorija.lt by August 10th, 2026. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by August 14th, 2026.
