After Industry: Cities and Regions in Transformation
How do cities and regions change when industry declines or undergoes fundamental transformation? What are the consequences of deindustrialization and postsocialist transformation for the economy, society, and everyday life? And how have these processes shaped Europe in the past and today? These questions will be explored at the international conference After Industry: Cities and Regions in Transformation, which will take place on 14–15 May 2026 in Kampus Hybernská (Hybernská 4, Prague 1) as part of the Urbanity project.
The conference will offer an interdisciplinary perspective on the transformation of cities and regions in Central and Eastern Europe as well as in a broader global context—from historical developments and social impacts to contemporary strategies of adaptation and development. Particular emphasis will be placed on the long-term dynamics of these processes and their changing forms over time. The conference addresses one of the key issues of our time: how cities and regions are changing as industry declines, transforms, or takes on new forms—and how these processes have shaped and continue to shape European societies.
“Experts from across Central and Eastern Europe will gather in Prague, and we have also succeeded in bringing prominent international scholars in this field into the programme,” says one of the conference organizers, Ondřej Ševeček of the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Keynote speakers include Steven High (Concordia University, Montréal), a leading international expert on deindustrialization, as well as Kerstin Brückweh (Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space, IRS) and Rebecca Madgin (University of Glasgow). Their presentations will offer insights into transformations of industrial and post-industrial societies in different contexts, based on long-term research.
The programme will also feature a public panel discussion, After Industry: Rethinking Local Economies, Memory, and Industrial Identity, which will take place on 14 May 2026 at 19:00 at Kampus Hybernská (Cirkulární hub, Prague 1). The discussion will be moderated by Adéla Gjuričová, Director of the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and will provide an opportunity to engage in debate on the transformation of local economies, industrial memory, and contemporary forms of inequality.
Selected contributions will be published in a collective scholarly volume in English aimed at an international audience, offering deeper insight into the dynamics of deindustrialization from both historical and contemporary perspectives.
The conference is supported by the Jan Amos Komenský Operational Programme within the research project Urbanity: Inequality, Adaptation and Public Space of Cities in Historical Perspective (CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008735), and is organized in cooperation with the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and Palacký University Olomouc. The Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) is also an international partner. The accompanying programme is supported by the Czech Academy of Sciences Strategy AV21 programme The Power of Objects: Materiality between Past and Future.
