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

On 7 February 2025, The Flemish Peace Institute will be hosting an international research conference on The Power of Testimonies for Democratic Education.

About the Project and Conference

Changing Democracies is a European project 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

We will start the day at 9.30 am with a welcome speech by Nils Duquet, director of the Flemish Peace Institute. During the rest of the day, our speakers – including Eugenie Khatschatrian (Project Manager and Operations Coordinator EuroClio), Marjolein Delvou & Hanna Zielinska (Programme Curators Evens Foundation) and Maarten Van Alstein (Researcher – Flemish Peace Institute) – will take the participants through the results of the research and give them starting points for practice.

We will work with innovative ideas from the proposed educational activities and exchange views during interesting panel discussions.

We will conclude at around 14:30 with a fascinating keynote speech by Anna Cento Bull (University of Bath) & Hans Lauge Hansen (Aarhus University).

Registration is free but mandatory. Register here: