The Lithuanian Institute of History is pleased to announce that the 1st Vilnius Convention in Historical Theory, organised by the Institute, will take place from 29 to 31 August 2025 in the Sapieha Palace (L. Sapiegos St. 13), in the city of Vilnius, Lithuania.
As contemporary societies – in the East and West of Europe and in the Global South and North alike – experience their presents as unstable, unsettling, and perilous, escaping those presents becomes an imperative. However, as both pasts and futures seem equally troubled, unsettling, and perilous, there is no desirable historical trajectory and no plausible conception of history that could provide orientation in time. Should societies settle with presentism or fight it (Hartog 2015)? Should they stay with the trouble (Haraway 2016), find “time shelters” in idealized pasts (Gospodinov 2023), righting past and present wrongs by mobilizing history against itself (Satia 2020), or should they acknowledge “future-disorientation” and the anticipated leaps of “unprecedented change” into unfathomable futures (Simon 2019)? Is there anything societies should do in the first place in directionless times? And, most importantly, what conception of history would be able to account for all these equally compelling and yet conflicting imperatives?
The 1st Vilnius Convention in Historical Theory aims to bring together 12 scholars to discuss these questions. Two of the three days of the event are reserved for exploring what scholars from East to West and South to North might say to one another and learn from another about the convention’s central theme in a setting of academic exchange, while the third day is reserved for cultural activities and exchange.
The Convention will be the first of its kind. It is planned to take place each August/September in Vilnius, organized around a yearly theme to be discussed by 12 yearly rotating participants.
The Sapieha Palace is the partner of the Convention.
