Dear colleagues,

We would like to cordially invite you to the International Academic Conference "Foreigners. Enemies. Heretics. Faces of Fear in the History of Eastern Europe", which will take place on 1 and 2 November at the Department of History of the Masaryk University.

The central theme of our conference is fear and its specific forms in the perception of people in medieval and modern Eastern Europe. Over the centuries, certain social, religious and ethnic groups have been singled out as the source of evil because of a sense of threat to the individual or society. Our focus will be on the different faces of evil in Eastern Europe and its reflection in written sources and historiography.

The conference, which will be held in both online and face-to-face formats, will feature presentations by experts from foreign universities in Poland, Slovakia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Bulgaria and Spain, as well as representatives of the organising Masaryk University, including PhD students, and members of other Czech academic institutions. Papers will be presented in Czech, English and some other Slavic languages.

The aim of our conference is to create an inspiring research environment, open to discussion and uniting researchers from different countries. We would also like to emphasise the key role of Eastern Europe in the study of the entire Central European region, and that knowledge of the context of earlier history is also essential for the analysis of contemporary events. Let us discuss the history of Eastern Europe together.