Brill: Biography Studies; Series Editor: Hans Renders (Groningen) | Volume „Regional Biography Traditions“, edited by Hans Renders, Jana Wohlmuth Markupová (Prague), and David Veltman (Groningen) (PDF)

Proposalsy by: December 2025

This academic series is devoted to biography as an object and a method of research, with a view to answering the current demand for a theorization of biography as an emerging eld, at a crossroads between several disciplines in the humanities. The main goal of the series is to publish leading publications in the eld of biography studies. Biography is considered here as distinct from autobiography. The Biography Studies series will not be a solely historical series, nor a series for literary theory, nor for Life Writing, but a series for biography studies: genuinely inter- and multidisciplinary, providing the subject of biography its own deserved space. It will not publish (biographical) source publications or biographies, but publications that re ect on and investigate biography/biographies as a research methodology and with regard to its role in public spheres. Read more … (Web)

CfP for the volume „Regional Biography Traditions“
In the past two decades, scholarly research on biography has experienced a tempestuous development. In 2004, the world’s first permanent research institute devoted solely to the study of biography was established at the Univ. of Groningen, the Netherlands. Soon, the establishment of other institutes and research platforms followed. As a result, the field has today entered the phase of setting out substantial lines of research, taking another step in further defining international research on biography.
What is the public role of biographies in various cultures and societies? How is the agency of individual subjects valued in national historiography, and how is this reflected in biographical practices? In each subsequent part of the book series Biography Studies (Brill), a different answer will be given to this question, depending on the region of the world that is under scrutiny. By investigating the biographical practice and traditions for each region in great detail, structures might come up that are relevant on a larger scale, that can address the historiography of a truly global genre.
Highlighting national, cultural, and societal particularities of the function of biographies and biographical research in a certain geographical context, this series aims to give further scholarly embedding to one of biography’s core qualities: providing insight into historical change through research on the level of the individual perspective. The editorial process of the series is in the hands of the Biography Institute and the Department of Historical Studies of Charles Univ., Prague. Thanks to the networks of these organizations, a broad international and distinguished group of researchers can be addressed for this series, focusing first on Central and Eastern Europe. How do historians in the Czech Republic, Poland, or Hungary justify their choice to write a biography? How do they shape the current debates about memory of the communist past, and does the debate follow different lines than, for example, in Slovakia or Romania? In this volume, we invite different Central and Eastern European biographers to reflect upon their theoretical framework: which decisions did they make to connect the individual life story with national traditions in historiography? How did they engage with oral history? How did they tackle problems with the accessibility or reliability of sources?
These and other questions will be at stake in the next installment of the Biography Studies series, which will be published at the end of 2026. Read more … (PDF)

If you like to contribute to this or subsequent volumes in the series be welcome to reach out
to Jana Wohlmuth Markupová <jana.wohlmuthmarkupova@fhs.cuni.cz>, Hans Renders <j.w.renders@rug.nl>, and David Veltman <d.veltman@rug.nl>.

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