CBOW early stage researchers hold Advanced Training Course 5 and Midterm Review in Warsaw

Oskars Gruziņš member of the European Union’s Marie Curie Initial Training Network, “Children born of war – past, present and future project,” from the University of Latvia participated at the project’s Advanced Training Course (ATC) 5 and the projects midterm review in Warsaw, Poland.

From September the 26th to the 30th 2016, Oskars Gruziņš participated at the project’s third training course. The week consisted of an EU lead review of the projects, in which Oskars presented his work thus far, a day-long workshop on transcript analysis, and the training course titled “Memory- Remembrance and Forgetting: Construction of Identity,” at the German Historical Institute. The subjects presented related to the overall Marie Curie project and Oskars’ working package, which will be a study on children born of Third Reich and Soviet soldiers in Latvia.

During the workshop, the early stage researchers had the opportunity to review some transcripts with experienced Polish oral historians. They looked at the ways in which conclusions could be drawn out from interviews and how difficult situations during interviews can be dealt with. In the advanced training courses, lecturers from a variety of universities and institutions covered topics in lectures titled “A Shared History? Eastern Europe as a Challenge?,” “Memory and Society,” “Memory and Biography,” “Memory and Forgetting from a Psychological Perspective,” “Memory and Public Spaces,” “Local, National and Transnational,” and “Memory, History and Identity.”

This training will tie into Oskars’ Ph.D. project on children born of Third Reich and Soviet soldiers in Latvia. The project is part of the European Union Marie Curie Initial Training Network, “Children born of war – past, present and future project.” This project is a Horizon 2020 plan which is composed of 15 early stage researchers, 11 organizations, 12 partner organizations, with an aim at “understanding the challenges of CBOW in volatile societies [that] will inform the normative debates and, ultimately, policies on the reintegration of CBOW into post-conflict societies.”