The workshop has been the outcome of the research undergone, up to date, by the members of the research project on the history of “Feminisms and Politics in the Interwar Balkans (1923-1939) [FEPIB]”, with professor Aikaterini Dalakoura as the principal investigator. The research team, historians from Bulgaria, Greece, Romania, Serbia and Slovakia, together with two collaborating members met in Rethymno in order to present and discuss the research conducted so far.
The workshop aimed to keep the members informed of each other’s progress, reinforcing coordination, cohesion and the connection of the studies to the aims of the overall project. More precisely, the objectives of the workshop were the exchange of information on the primary sources localized in several libraries and archives in the participants’ countries, and collected; the second aim was the discussion of methodological issues and concepts and terms, such as ‘entangled history’, ‘trans/international history’, ‘politics’, ‘feminisms’, ‘female/feminist diplomacy’, ‘nationalism-internationalism’, ‘feminism-pacifism’ etc; the above presentations and discussion occupied the first day of the Workshop. The third aim was the presentation of the subject(s) that specifically each researcher is working on. In this context, the participants provided further information on the establishment of the Little Entente of Women (LEW), highlighted the LEW’s multifaced project on diplomacy for feminist and international policy issues, as well as specific issues that preoccupied the LEW, such as the conflicts between feminist organizations, or issues that the LEW dealt with (protection of children out of wedlock, women’s suffrage, pacifism); other members’ presented their work on other (than the LEW) women’s regional/international collaborations, such as the (Greek) Socialist Women’s Group, the Bulgarian Women’s Social-Democratic Union, the Slavic Women’s Union, the Lyceum Club of Greek Women, and the participation of feminist organizations of the region in the Balkan Conferences (1930-1934). These presentations (third aim of the workshop) occupied the second day of the Workshop.
