Winter School 2026

The annual winter school brings together PhD researchers from all Estonian universities that teach arts and humanities. Each winter school focuses on a narrower topic. The upcoming 15 Winter School will be dedicated to archives, broadly conceived, and the affects they preserve and generate.  

The past decades have been characterised by a renewed debate about facts and their interpretations. It is thus pertinent to return to the question of where and how we preserve the complexity of the past and prevent its ideological simplification. Archives preserve facts, but also emotions. They also generate emotions and do multi-layered affective work (e.g., building collective memories, resurrecting lost voices, etc.) Side by side with the traditional repositories of historical documents, we want to look at material and immaterial heritage, different digital archives, as well as fiction and arts as affective archives. We are also interested in how archives also open the past up to reimagination, through creative work. 

The winter school will combine lectures by international experts with seminars, roundtables, and social events that facilitate discussion and networking between researchers. The accommodation costs of participants from outside the University of Tartu will be covered by the hosting institution.  

The winter school takes place in English and is open to doctoral researchers from all Estonian universities focusing on the arts and humanities. Upon full participation in the study program, participants will be awarded 3 ECTS credits.