Transformative Podcast26 Helmi 2025

Welfare States and Social Justice in 20th Century Central Europe (Radka Šustrová)

Studying social justice reveals the promises a regime - liberal or otherwise - makes to its citizens. It also reveals how citizens interpret these promises. But to what extent should we use the term “social justice” to understand societies excluding entire cohorts - most notoriously Jews and Roma in territories occupied by the Nazis during World War II? By focusing on exactly this period, and taking the example of the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Radka Šustrová discusses not only how welfare states (as much as culture, literature, or media) have historically cemented nationalist projects, but also how thoroughly illiberal concepts of social justice have historically been. In this episode of the Transformative Podcast, she reflects moreover on the extent to which this wartime inheritance impacted the postwar welfare states celebrated in Central Europe on both sides of the Iron Curtain.

Radka Šustrová is the author of Nations Apart: Czech Nationalism and Authoritarian Welfare under Nazi Rule (Oxford, 2024). She is a researcher at RECET and a lecturer in social history at Charles University in Prague. Her research focuses on the history of the welfare state, social justice, social and labour rights, women's activism, and nationalism in twentieth-century Central Europe. From 2020 to 2022, she was a British Academy Newton International Fellow and supervisor in history at the University of Cambridge. In 2022, she was awarded a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship at the University of Vienna. Her further publications include three books, several edited volumes, and articles in English, German, and Czech.

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East German Football in the Transformation Years (Jan Mohnhaupt)

What can the lens of football tell us about the transformation years in East Germany? In this episode, historian and journalist Jan Mohnhaupt and Jelena Đureinović (RECET) reflect upon this question. ...

17 Kesä 14min

Sex Tourism in Socialist Hungary (Priska Komaromi)

What does the lens of sex work and sexuality tell us about the history of state socialism in Central and Eastern Europe? In this episode, Priska Komaromi (Humboldt University) discusses tourism aimed ...

27 Touko 22min

Streetscapes of War and Revolution (Claire Morelon)

How might we capture historical events like war and revolution from street level? In this episode of the Transformative Podcast, Claire Morelon (University of Manchester) tells Rosamund Johnston (RECE...

6 Touko 16min

Croatian Diaspora in Argentina (Nikolina Židek)

How have the Croats in Argentina preserved their identity, memory, and community? How have they transmitted it across generations to this day? Following the collapse of the fascist Independent State o...

15 Huhti 24min

Austerity Welfare Work in Interwar Bucharest (Alexandra Ghiț)

Why have the histories of work and the histories of welfare been told separately, and what happens when we bring them together? In this episode of the Transformative Podcast, Alexandra Ghiț (GWZO Leip...

11 Maalis 22min

Naan-Aligned Cooking (Kevin Kenjar)

What does the Non-Aligned Movement look like on a plate? Starting with a series of informal dinners in Rijeka and expanding into various events and workshops, Kevin Kenjar (University of Rijeka) pays ...

18 Helmi 18min

1989 and the Great Transformation (Jannis Panagiotidis)

The Routledge Handbook of 1989 and the Great Transformation analyzes the pivotal year of 1989 and the transformation processes that resulted from a historical perspective. It brings research done over...

28 Tammi 18min

From Triumph to Humiliation and Back: China’s Everchanging History of WWII (Markéta Bajgerová Verly)

Ever since the foundation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, the Communist Party of China (CCP) has used the historical memory of WWII to legitimize its rule. Exactly how the historical confli...

7 Tammi 22min