The international research network on „Military, War, and Gender/Diversity“ (MKGD): MKGD Online Research Colloquium (Web)

Time: Mo., 07.07.2025, 4:00-6:00 pm (CET)
Venue: virtual space (Web)

The monthly colloquium of the research network „Military, War, and Gender/Diversity“ (known by its German acronym MKGD) continues in this summer semester. The recently enlarged team of organizers is very much looking forward to welcoming you online! (Web)

Andrea Petö: Gendered Wars, Gendered Memories: The Aftermath of the Second World War in European Comparison
This presentation examines how illiberal memory politics shape and reconstruct narratives of World War II through gendered perspectives, with a particular focus on the Holocaust and wartime sexual violence in the European context. It will show how gendered experiences of war, including sexual violence and resistance, are selectively memorialized and instrumentalized to serve present-day political agendas. By comparing memorial practices across Europe, the talk will demonstrate how gendered war memories become potent tools in contemporary political discourse, challenging established historical narratives and reshaping collective memory. In this way, its analysis will contribute to understanding how gender intersects with memory politics in post-war Europe and underline the complex relationship between memory, violence, and illiberalism in a new geopolitical context.

Moderation: Isabel Heinemann (Univ. of Bayreuth)

Andrea Petö is a Professor at the Central European Univ., Vienna, and a Doctor of Science at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences. Her research focuses on the twentieth-century history of gender, conflict, violence, and memory, focusing on Central Eastern Europe. Her recent publications include Forgotten Massacre: Budapest 1944 (DeGruyter, 2021) and The Women of the Arrow Cross Party. Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War (Palgrave, Macmillan, 2020).

Full programme of the colloquium (Web)