Choosing the Past: The Manifestation of History in a Changing Public Sphere

From 10 to 12 June 2026, Charles University in Prague hosted the international student conference Choosing the Past: The Manifestation of History in a Changing Public Sphere. The aim of the conference was to reflect on how various actors shaping the public sphere select, represent and ideologically transform the past and history.

Students whose research engages with history, memory, politics of belonging, visual culture, the decolonization of knowledge, media discourse, minorities, gender and other issues related to the shaping of the past in the contemporary public sphere presented their work.

The program featured fifty-eight highly diverse papers, which connected remembrance and contemporary uses of the past with, among other topics, digital culture, art and performance practices, education, urban heritage, media, questions of gender, and national imaginaries, narratives and borders.

Eva Fekonja contributed with an online presentation on processes of selecting the past in ethno music and their ambivalent micropolitical dimensions.