Summer School: Labour Regimes on the Fringes of Europe

The RETLAMI-SEE project invites early career researchers, PhD candidates, and postdoctoral researchers (with no more than five years of experience since obtaining their PhD) in the social sciences and humanities to apply for the summer school, Labour Regimes on the Fringes of Europe, which will take place in Ljubljana, Slovenia, from 15 to 19 June 2026. 

The summer school will explore transnational labour regimes and the ways in which they (re)shape workers' rights, opportunities, and everyday labour experiences across the societies of Southeastern Europe and beyond. These issues will be approached from a variety of connected disciplinary perspectives, including historiography, sociology, social anthropology and related disciplines. Through a week of lectures, workshops, film projections and discussions, we will address the gendered, temporal, legal and demographic aspects of labour regimes and observe them in both macroeconomic and microeconomic contexts. A series of methodological workshops will offer participants hands-on experience in thinking and writing about social worlds shaped by shifting relations of production, the circulation of people, labour and commodities, and the organisation of production sites, both historically (during socialism) as well as under contemporary capitalism. 

The summer school is organised by the Institute of Culture and Memory Studies ZRC SAZU, in collaboration with the University of Vienna’s Research Centre for the History of Transformations (UNIVIE RECET), the Faculty of Political Sciences at the University of Banja Luka (FPN UNIBL) and the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) in Regensburg, in the framework of the Horizon Europe project “Enhancing Capacities for Quality and Impactful Research on Transformations, Labour and Migration in Southeast Europe” (RETLAMI-SEE) funded by the European Commission. 

Accommodation and travel expenses for selected applicants will be covered by the organisers (travel costs are limited to 350 EUR). 

To apply, send a motivation letter, CV, and a brief outline (max. 2 pages) of your current research to summerschoolretlami.see@zrc-sazu.si by 15 March 2026 at the latest. For additional information, contact tanja.petrovic@zrc-sazu.si and/or ana.hofman@zrc-sazu.si.