Conference ‘Changing Democracies’: The power of testimonies for democratic education

Date
07/02/2025
All day

Registration for this event is free but mandatory (via the form at the bottom of this page).

Changing Democracies is a project (co-funded by the European Union) that explores how intergenerational and critical dialogue about Europe’s living history of recent transitions to democracy might help us understand the vulnerability of today’s democracies.
During the project, personal testimonies were collected in Croatia, Czechia, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Belgium, and The Netherlands about the experiences of the transition from dictatorship to democracy.

The conference in the Flemish Parliament on 7 February 2025 will focus on the results of the scientific part of the project, as well as concrete ways and tools to work with it online and in classrooms and other educational contexts. It is organised by the Flemish Peace Institute in collaboration with the project partners involved in the research component of the project. They include Charles University (CZ), Escola de Cultura de Pau (ES), i2ADS – Faculty of Fine Arts – University of Porto & Esmae (POR), EuroClio (NL) and Evens Foundation (BEL). The conference will be held in English.

Programme

09:30 – 9:40: Welcome and opening by Nils Duquet (Director Flemish Peace Insitute)
09:40 – 10:00: Presentation of the edited volume The Power of Testimonies for Democratic Education by Maarten Van Alstein (Senior researcher, Flemish Peace Institute)
10:00 – 10:45: Panel conversation on the links between oral history, history education and democratic education with Weronika Czyżewska-Poncyljusz (Director of international programmes, Borderland Foundation) and Karel Van Nieuwenhuyse (Professor of history, Catholic University Leuven) and moderated by Maarten Van Alstein (senior researcher at the Flemish Peace Institute)
10:45 – 11:00: Coffee break
11:00 – 11:20: Presentation of the project website by Hanna Zielińska and Marjolein Delvou (Programme curators, Evens Foundation)
11:20 – 11:40: Presentation of the project’s educational materials by Eugenie Khatschatrian (Project Manager and Operations Coordinator EuroClio)
11:40 – 12:30: Panel conversation on the value of a transnational perspective for democratic education with Eugenie Khatschatrian, Marjolein Delvou (Programme curator, Evens Foundation), Bjorn Wansink (Professor of education, Utrecht University) and moderated by Aniek Smit (Oral historian, Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp)
12:30 – 13:30: Lunch, networking, visit exhibition
13:30 – 14:30: Keynote speech by prof. dr Hans Lauge Hansen (Aarhus University) and prof. dr. Anna Cento Bull (University of Bath)
14:30 – 15:00: Q&A and discussion with the audience.

Reserve your place now using the form at the bottom of this page.

About Changing Democracies

Changing Democracies is the result of a collaboration between 13 partners from 10 European countries and is coordinated by the Evens Foundation and EuroClio, with funding from the European Commission. The Flemish Peace Institute coordinates the research and contributes to the collection of personal testimonies that are presented through various channels, including a travelling exhibition and a book.

Register below