Call for Papers
Environment and Society in East-Central Europe Conference (ESIEE), University of Ostrava, Czechia
28-29 May 2026
Image: Fortepan / Morvay Kinga / Morvay Lajos
The Environment and Society in East-Central Europe Conference 2026 invites scholars from history, environmental studies, sociology, geography, and related disciplines to explore how humans have shaped—and been shaped by—the environment in the East-Central European region. Does East-Central Europe have a distinguished environmental past? If so, how?
To answer these pressing questions, this conference provides a forum for interdisciplinary exchange, encourages collaboration, and fosters new approaches to understanding the historical and contemporary environmental challenges of the region.
The 2026 ESIEE Conference welcomes papers and panels addressing a wide range of topics, including but not limited to:
- Environmental change and resource use
- Urban and rural transformations
- Environmental activism and civil society
- Borders, cross-border regions, and environmental cooperation
- Rivers, floods, droughts, and water regimes in long-term perspective
- Forests, woodlands, and commons management
- Industrialization and the environment beyond pollution
- War, militarization, and ecological transformations
- Socialist environmentalism: concepts, actors, and strategies
- Technology and nature: envirotechnical systems in history
- Historical geography and environmental history interactions
- Environmental knowledge and the Enlightenment revolution in forestry
- “The State Against Nature”: governance and transformation in the 18th–19th centuries
- Narratives of “slow hope” in times of crisis
- Tracing the roots of East-Central European environmental history
- Environmental well-being in East-Central Europe
Submission Information:
Individual Papers: Submit your 300-word abstract and page-long bio by 31 January 2026 to
Complete Sessions, Workshops, and Interventions: Submit your 300-500 word session abstract with information on approach, goal, contributors’ role, and page-long bio by 31 January 2026 to
Registration fee: amount to be specified.
ESIEE 2026 is supported by the European Society for Environmental History, Slovak Historical Society, University of Ostrava, and the Department of History at the University of Ostrava.
Updated: 16. 12. 2025
