Transformations of Postwar Europe International Conference Organized within the Leviathan Project in Sofia, Bulgaria

The Leviathan Project Team in Sofia organized an international symposium with the title “Transformations of Postwar Europe: Medicine, Bodies and Technologies", on May 27–30, 2024.

During the four days of the intensive conference program the participants gave 36 presentations, and each of them were followed by a lively discussion. The rich variety of topics—from social marginalization to population planning and reproductive policies, from death and dying to deviant bodies, from alternative medicine to nature as technology, from engineering the new socialist man to the institutionalized practices and ideological concepts—indicates the complexity and richness of post war biopolitics in Europe. Speakers from Albania, Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Hungary, Poland, Serbia, Spain, Switzerland, Turkey, and the United Kingdom presented their research in the Czech Cultural Center in Sofia.

Our Budapest team gave two main presentations: Judit Sándor and Éva Földes outlined the results of their comparative study on death and dying in postwar Hungary and the Netherlands, then Barna Szamosi discussed eugenic thinking in reproductive medicine in state socialist Hungary. Besides the conference presentations there were also social events that contributed to the synergy between various researchers who study this exciting field.