Slavonic and East European Medieval Studies Group (SEEMSG)

Description

The Slavonic and East European Medieval Studies Group is a UK-based society that brings together international scholars to discuss the latest research in the field. It is affiliated with the Slavonic Studies Section of the University of Cambridge.

The Group was founded by a group of British medievalists in order to provide a means for scholars with an interest in any aspect of the Medieval Slavonic World to meet informally and to exchange ideas.

The group currently has over seventy members throughout Europe and abroad. It meets biannually, usually on the Saturday nearest to Martinmas and on a Saturday in the second half of March. Meetings have generally alternated between Oxford, Cambridge, and London.

The Group stands in solidarity with global institution of higher learning that have severed their links and are boycotting Russian universities as institutions that express support for the invasion of Ukraine by President Putin’s regime.

In response to President Putin’s falsification of history, and to the general erroneous and anachronistic use of the term ‘Russia’ to refer to the medieval past of the peoples who inhabited Eastern Europe, the Group rejects the use of 'Early Russia’, ‘Medieval Russia’, or ‘Ancient Russia’ when the intended reference is to the languages, arts, cultures, churches, dynasties, histories or lands of Early Rus’.

In the general framework of the decolonisation agenda at educational and research institutions, the Group calls on all practitioners to re-evaluate their Introduction to Russian history and culture classes to prevent the propagation of imperialist and nationalist notions that obscure the diverse cultural inheritance of Eastern Europe and Eurasia and that demean the cultural legacies of the varied peoples that today inhabit this part of the world.

Offers funding

No, this infrastructure does not provide funding.

Founding year

1974

Contact details

On the map

Go to larger version of this map

Categorisation

Type

Project Tags

University affiliation(s)

University of Cambridge
Cambridge