CEST Summer School 2026 | Naples

From 20 to 28 September 2026, the CEST Summer School brought together early-career researchers and international scholars in Naples to explore the politics of archives in Turkey and related geographies.

Hosted by the University of Naples L’Orientale, the week-long program combined lectures, workshops, participant presentations, discussions and visits, examining archives not simply as repositories of information but as institutions that actively shape how knowledge about the past is produced.

CEST Summer School Program "The Politics of Archives in Turkey and Related Geographies"

Exploring the politics of archives

Preserving, cataloguing, organizing and granting—or restricting—access to documents, newspapers and other materials are inherently political practices.

Taking this as its starting point, the Summer School examined how archives shape historical knowledge and how decisions about access, classification and digitization intersect with questions of sovereignty, national history, identity and the boundaries of permissible knowledge.

Participants discussed developments in Turkey and related geographies where new collections have become available while others have been restricted or closed. They also considered the growing role of NGOs, private initiatives and community-based projects in creating alternative archives.

Digitalization was another central theme. While digitization has made vast quantities of material accessible to researchers across borders, it can also privilege certain sources and collections over others. The Summer School therefore addressed both the opportunities and the limitations created by digital archives.

Among the questions explored during the week were:

How does the availability of online sources shape research and knowledge production?
What are the opportunities and limitations of digital, multimedia and transnational archives?
How do cataloguing systems and archival organization influence research on minority, marginalized or politically sensitive subjects?
How can researchers work critically with visual and oral history collections as well as textual sources?
What can archives themselves tell us about institutions, states and societies?

A week of research, discussion and practical work

The Summer School brought together graduate students, doctoral researchers and early-career academics working across disciplines including history, anthropology, political science, visual studies, memory studies and heritage studies.

Over the course of the program, participants took part in:

lectures by international scholars
methodological workshops and guided discussions
practical sessions focusing on archival materials and research methods
presentations and discussions of participants’ ongoing research
visits and excursions connected to different forms of archives and archival practice
sessions on academic writing, publishing, presentation and research funding

Participants developed and discussed their own research projects throughout the week, creating opportunities for exchange across disciplines, institutions and national contexts.

Archives as sites of knowledge production

A central theme running through the Summer School was the idea that archives do not simply preserve knowledge. The way materials are collected, classified, described, digitized and made accessible affects the histories researchers are able to reconstruct and the questions they are able to ask.

By combining theoretical discussion with practical engagement with different kinds of archives, the program encouraged participants to approach archival research critically and to examine both the possibilities and the limitations of the sources they use.

The program considered a broad range of archival settings, including:

institutional and state archives
private and family archives
activist and community archives
digital and multimedia archives

About CEST

The Summer School was organized by the Consortium for European Symposia on Turkey (CEST), a network of institutions and scholars established in 2015 to foster critical research on Turkey’s history, politics and society.

CEST brings together scholars from Sciences Po Paris, the University of Vienna, Stockholm University, the University of Deusto, the University of Naples L’Orientale and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice.

CEST is supported by the Mercator Foundation and co-sponsored by the Keyman Modern Turkish Studies Program at Northwestern University.

Conveners

The 2026 Summer School was convened by:

Lea Nocera, University of Naples L’Orientale
Yavuz Köse, University of Vienna
Elise Massicard, Sciences Po / CNRS

The Politics of Archives in Turkey and Related Geographies