Our Activities and Products

First EFREC Conference took place

The inaugural Conference of the European Forum for Reconciliation and Cooperation in History and Social Sciences Education (EFREC) took place on 26 and 27 April 2022. The conference aimed to bring together representatives of state and civil society initiatives conducting bi- and multilateral textbook revision and improvement work in Europe, Africa and Asia, giving them opportunities to connect, discuss challenges arising in international textbook revision, and share best practices.

Report from the First EFREC Conference

The inaugural conference of the European Forum for Reconciliation and Cooperation in History and Social Sciences Education took place on 26 and 27 April 2022. Representatives of state and civic initiatives in the field of education-related reconciliation and revision activities from Europe, Africa and Asia discussed their experiences and shared their perspectives on different topics of their activities.

Second EFREC Conference

Under the motto "Learning from the past for the future? What kind of history textbook does Europe need in the 21st century?", the second EFREC conference took place in Paris on 15 and 16 September 2022. The aim of the conference was to discuss new educational media for European history lessons together with historians, representatives of the social sciences and teachers from Germany, Poland, France, Moldova and Ukraine.

Regional workshop "New perspectives for European cooperation in history education in Romania, Moldova, and Ukraine"

The EU accession process of the Republic of Moldova and Ukraine, initiated with the successful candidacy, offers a unique occasion to give voice to the expectations of educational policy makers, academics and history teachers in Moldova, Romania and Ukraine and to put forward for discussion their ideas for a readjustment of history education using new educational media in a comparative perspective. The regional workshop served to exchange views on what is needed at the educational policy level for school and historical education in these countries and what perspectives and innovative didactic ideas they offer in terms of European cooperation in the field of curriculum development and educational media production.

EFREC at the Second Belgrade History Teaching Symposium

At the invitation of the Serbian initiative “Education for the 21st Century” and the University of Belgrade, EFREC contributed to two panels at the Second Belgrade History Teaching Symposium on March 23-24, 2023. The panals were addressed educational experts, including history teachers, academics, curricula designers and history students and covered the question about the role of history education in post-conflict settings as a potential agent in the process of building peace and European unity as well as the history curricula and textbooks and their role for reconciliation.

EFREC at the International Congress "Rethinking Ukraine and Europe: New Challenges For Historians" in Vilnius

The International Congress “Rethinking Ukraine and Europe: New Challenges For Historians” will be held in Vilnius on September 15-17, 2023. Together with the German-Polish Textbook Commission and the Ukrainian-Polish Textbook Commission, EFREC is hosting a panel on „How to teach the history of Ukraine and the Ukraine-Lithuania-Belarus region? Old and new textbooks on the history of the region".

Regional Workshop on History Education in the Eastern Mediterranean

The Expert Seminar on History Education in the Eastern Mediterranean: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Co-operation on History Teaching in Post-Conflict Settings is going to be held in Nicosia on December 13-14, 2023. The overarching objective of the seminar is to promote quality education in order to enhance students and teachers to shape quality education for democratic culture. It aims to foster a dialogue on the current state of history teaching in the region exploring possibilities and prospects of bi- and multilateral cooperation between educators in Israel, Palestine, Cyprus, Greece, Turkey and Lebanon, and it will explore how an interdisciplinary approach (into research and practice) of history teaching can contribute to conflict transformation.

EFREC Policy Brief

The Policy Brief provides an overview of the challenges for the work of bilateral and multilateral initiatives in textbook work that have been observed since the 2000s. In addition, the text describes how the multilateral cooperation network for historical-political education in Europe is facing these challenges and provides insights on EFREC's previous activities and initial results.

EFREC Journal Article: A New Format for Multilateral Textbook Work

In this article in a scientific series of the University of Wroclaw, the authors of the EFREC team justify the need to strengthen and institutionalize efforts for bilateral and multilateral textbook work and present the stages of implementation of these activities.

EFREC Conference in Wroclaw

The Willy Brandt Center for German and European Studies, the Leibniz Institute for Educational Media Georg Eckert Institute in Braunschweig and the…

International Conference ‘Teaching entangled history. A multilateral dialogue on teaching Ukrainian history in schools in the context of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine’