CISH 2026
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Across Borders, Beyond Classrooms: Self-organised Students and the Informal Making of Historical Knowledge

  • Date

    VI. Friday, 28.08.2026, 11:00-13:00/30

  • Location
    SR9 A1004
  • Theme
    B - Teaching History and Public History

Abstract

This panel explores the role of student organisations in developing history education and historical knowledge. From the nineteenth century to today, students of history and the humanities have organised themselves on the local, national and even international level. They did so to represent their interests within their academic institutions, to campaign for social change, but also to create alternative, informal spaces for intellectual engagements outside the official curriculum. This panel aims to focus on this lesser-studied aspect of the role of informal education and cultural and scientific exchange in history student clubs and student organisations. International exchange of students has increasingly become institutionalised in the past decades, through programmes like Erasmus or university-led partnerships. Student-led initiatives and informal student exchanges, often independent from formal frameworks, have complemented or challenged academic hierarchies. Student-led organisations like ISHA, for example, aimed to expand their understanding of history as a discipline and the role of historians through a combination of informal learning and international peer-to-peer exchanges. This panel examines how self-organised student exchanges, study trips, seminars and cultural tours facilitated direct encounters between student communities across different cities and countries, historical traditions and ideological influence spheres. By foregrounding the educational and cultural aspects of these student collectives operating within an international framework, the panel also reflects on what it means to study history across borders today. What can we learn from the self-organised models of student mobility and informal learning from the past, and how will contemporary challenges such as geopolitics, lack of institutional support, unequal access to travel and education, globalisation and polarisation, impact the viability of such initiatives? The panel welcomes historical case studies of student organisations and history clubs engaged in informal education and international exchange, as well as future-oriented contributions that critically address the possibilities and limitations of global student exchanges today.

Convenor

  • Charlotte Rottiers (ETH Zürich/KU Leuven)

Panelists

  • Miroslav Vašík (Charles University Prague)
  • Klára Řiháková (University of Edinburgh)
  • Elina Ziehm (Central European University)
  • Elīza Dāldere (University of Latvia)
  • Julia Boechat Machado (Central European University)

Papers

  • Nation, Education, and Beer: Student Associations as a Part of Student Culture in the Czech Lands from the 19th century to the Present

    Miroslav Vašík

  • "Die Gedanken sind frei": Students of the Humanities between institutional control and agency in the GDR

    Elina Ziehm

  • Remembering the Forbidden Past in the Baltics: Hidden Spaces of Learning and Resistance for History Students Beyond the Iron Curtain

    Elīza Dāldere

  • From Global Village to Gated World: Future challenges and possibilities for the International Students of History Association

    Julia Boechat Machado