Women's narratives and European integration history

The history of European integration and Europeanisation has developed into a varied field that has moved on from an initial focus on the vision and achievements of the founding fathers. However, even though women played a vital part in the European project launched after the Second World War, their role has yet to be fully explored. Women tended to remain in the background until they began to be more readily accepted, from the mid-1970 onwards, as political leaders, particularly following the first European elections by direct universal suffrage (1979) and the appointment of the first female European Commissioner (1989). By adopting an interdisciplinary approach and divers methodological backgrounds, the conference aims to analyse the topic of women from a variety of perspectives including specific historiographical traditions and theories related to the history of women, biographical narratives in the development of the European project, the “female lobby” in favour and against Europe, gendered entanglements related to European democracy, rights, policies, institutions and actors, digital storytelling and oral history in developing new knowledge of the past. This interdisciplinary conference - which has been focused on the period after World War Two - has at is objective to spark discussion on topics that can inform the following issues: specific historiographical traditions, theories, methodologies and approaches related to the history of women in Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries; biographical perspectives of outstanding women; the “female lobby; women in East-West dialogue; women and Euroscepticism; gendered perspectives of democracy; norms and practices in gathering, preserving, sharing and disseminating the memory of women who have played an active role on the European stage (oral history, text mining, network analysis, etc.)

The conference is organised in connection with the project “The role of women in European and international relations in Luxembourg” (2021-2025), developed by the University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) and Europe Direct at the University of Luxembourg (ED-UNILU).