Oskar Mulej

The project aims to address the ideological intricacies surrounding the questions of groupism and communitarianism in protecting minorities by looking at the historical case of minority activism in Europe during the interwar period. It sets to explore ideological fluidity of concepts such as national autonomy and ethnic community (Volksgemeinschaft), particularly by focusing on the ways in which they were conceptualized by the European Nationalities Congress president Josip Wilfan.

My project tackles the trajectories and ideological transformations of political parties in the interwar Czech lands, Austria and the Slovene part of Yugoslavia that descended from the pre-WW I national liberalism but were at the same time departing from the traditions in which they were historically rooted. The aim of the project is to develop a comparative perspective and position the objects of inquiry within a broader context of the “remainders of liberalism in an illiberal period”.