CEHS Initiative to Support Junior Scholars at the AHA Annual Meeting

Conference participation, especially at major events such as the American Historical Association’s annual meeting, remains a major indicator of scholarly productivity and excellence and is thus tied to professional advancement. However, the cost of attending such conferences can be prohibitive for junior scholars. The Central European History Society is thus pleased to announce a new initiative that will encourage junior scholars’ professional development by providing both financial and organizational support to their participation at the AHA’s annual meeting, at which time CEHS also holds its annual meeting. 

As part of this initiative, for the next three years, CEHS will help organize and support up to two (2) conference panels on themes related to Central European History. Interested junior scholars – ABD doctoral candidates and recent PhDs (up to three after degree completion) – will submit a session comprising three paper presentations. Panels with three junior scholars as presenters will be preferred; panels with two junior scholars and a more senior colleague will receive consideration. At least two presenters must be based in North America.

Sessions can be submitted complete with moderator and commentator or organizers can request that CEHS help identify and secure the participation of scholars for these roles. In that case, the CEHS executive board will help the organizers of each sponsored session, as needed, to recruit appropriate senior scholars to serve as moderators and commentators, thereby enhancing the panel’s visibility. 

CEHS offers a grant of $1,000 to each junior scholar who presents a paper in one of these sponsored sessions. The amount can be used to defray cost of travel, hotel accommodation, and/or AHA membership and registration fees. (Note that all US-based historians presenting at AHA sessions must be AHA members; foreign presenters are exempt from the membership rule). 

At this time, CEHS invites junior scholars to propose sessions for the AHA’s 2024 Annual Meeting, which will meet in San Francisco. The deadline for all applications is December 1, 2022. 

Application process

Because the panels supported as part of this initiative will be submitted to the AHA’s program committee, all applications need to follow the AHA’s guidelines for session proposals. However, because CEHS’s selection committee will be working with the organizers of the sessions selected for support to fine-tune their proposals and recruit moderators and/or commentators, the deadline for participation in this initiative falls well before the AHA’s deadline for submitting session proposals. 

Specifically, every session proposal should include:

• A list of all participants, including current email address, affiliation, city, state, and country. If you would like CEHS to help recruit a moderator and/or commentator for the session, please indicate that here.
• Session title (of no more than 20 words) 
• Session abstract (up to 500 words) 
• Short session abstract for the meeting app (up to 50 words) 
• Paper or presentation titles (if any) 
• Abstract or description for each presentation (up to 300 words). 
• Biographical paragraph or CV summary (up to 250 words) for each participant 
• Current e-mail address, affiliation, city, state, and country for each participant

Please create all proposals as a single Word (.docx) or pdf file and email them to Astrid M. Eckert (aeckert@emory.edu), using “CEHS Initiative to Support Junior Scholars” as the subject. Decisions on the sessions chosen for this initiative will be made by early January 2023. The selected panel(s) will then be submitted for acceptance by the AHA’s program committee (deadline February 15, 2023). Should the AHA decline to accept one or the other panel, CEHS will sponsor it directly.