About CEHS

Until 2012, CEHS was known as the Conference Group on Central European History (CGCEH).  It was founded in 1958 as a successor to the American Historical Association’s Committee for the Study of War Documents. CEHS is a non-profit organization and AHA-affiliate society that focuses exclusively on educational, charitable, and academic purposes.

CEHS aims to promote scholarly engagement with Central Europe’s diverse and deeply layered history. As a geographic space with historically shifting borders, Central Europe encompasses the historic states and regions inhabited by German-speaking peoples and their various neighbors in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Habsburg lands, and East Central Europe more generally. The term also includes the experiences and activities of Central European peoples in other nations and world regions, as well as the influences of the latter in Central Europe. The Society is dedicated to collaborating with academic researchers worldwide who share a scholarly interest in the history of Central Europe and its inhabitants. Committed to the material and intellectual support of emerging scholars, the Society advocates not only a more diverse community of scholars but also invites innovative research that broadens scholarly inquiry.

The Society supports the study of Central European history in a number of ways, including:

• producing the quarterly journal Central European History (published by Cambridge University Press), the leading Anglophone journal in the field
• convening and sponsoring panels at the annual meeting of the American Historical Association (CEHS does not organize its own conferences)
• recognizing outstanding scholarship by awarding prestigious book and article prizes
• supporting primary research by emerging scholars in Central European history through travel and research grants.