The conference on 7 February at the Flemish Parliament in Brussels, will bring together leading thinkers, practitioners, historians, educators, researchers and policy advisors to explore innovative educational approaches for the evolving challenges facing democracies worldwide.

With a consortium of 12 organisations across 10 countries and coordinated by the Evens Foundation, Changing Democracies explores how Europe’s living history of recent transitions to democracy might help us understand the vulnerability of today’s democracies. At its heart is a story collection of personal testimonies from people who have lived through the transition to democracy–a living, alternative record of an important but often overlooked part of European history.

Changing Democracies: The power of testimonies for democratic education will focus on the more formal research elements of the project, as well as exploring new tools for working with the material collated throughout the project.

The conference is organised by the Flemish Peace Institute, along with members of the Changing Democracies Research working group, including Charles University (Czech Republic), Escola de Cultura de Pau (Spain), i2ADS – Faculty of Fine Arts – University of Porto & Esmae (Portugal), EuroClio (Netherlands) and the Evens Foundation.

Key highlights include a thought-provoking keynote from prof. dr Hans Lauge Hansen (Aarhus University) and the debut of a new research publication edited by senior researcher Maarten Van Alstein.

As well as presenting the work the Evens Foundation has been doing on creating the interactive Changing Democracies website, we’ll also be on the panel for a discussion about the value of a transnational perspective, alongside our colleagues from EuroClio, and Bjorn Wansink (Professor of Education, Utrecht University), with moderating by Aniek Smit (Oral historian, Red Star Line Museum, Antwerp).

Registration is free but mandatory, and places are limited.

View the full programme and registration details.

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Changing Democracies is co-funded by the European Union.