Krakow Workshop

Immediately following the project's International Conference in June, and very much inspired by it, we charged straight into a project workshop (also hosted by the Jagiellonian University on 24 June) to discuss what our volume might look like.  

Dorota Pietrzyk-Reeves and Paulina Kewes opened by outlining the projects key goals, namely: 

• to develop innovative, comparative, and interdisciplinary conceptual frameworks and methodologies; 
• to focus on the parliaments of England, Ireland, and Scotland, and the sejms of Poland and Lithuania (and the commonwealth); 

The workshop’s main purpose was to ask what are the best research perspectives and methods for such a comparative study? How should we define parliamentary culture (or cultures)? And in light of the project’s key research questions, what were the most appropriate topics to focus on to explore it? Or, in other words, what might a book on the topic look like? 

Everyone suggested potential topics for chapters. These covered the more conceptual – what is parliamentary culture? – and the more tangible – what was the culture of decision making in our assemblies? 

After very productive and lively discussions, several prospective chapters emerged. These will focus on: the cultures of political community, representation, institutions, decision-making, space, and ritual. While by no means comprehensive, they cover a wide range of aspects of parliamentary culture. 

We agreed that each chapter will be co-authored by at least two people, and most by at least three. During the workshop we formed our teams for each prospective chapter. In some cases, we also identified gaps in our expertise and started to think about whom to approach to join the team to help us fill them. 

All in all, we made significant progress in mapping out the shape of the volume and the next steps towards making it happen! We left the workshop enthusiastic as we headed for a relaxing dinner in town. 

Our thanks go to Jane Ohlmeyer, who generously shared many ideas and gave us very useful feedback, but who is (very sadly for us) too busy to commit to joining any of the chapters.