That have been two very interesting days indeed. Yesterday and today the institute hosted an international conference entitled "Religion and Authority in Central Europe", with about twenty participants from Canada, the US, England, France, Germany, Austria and the Czech Republic. Actually I had been hoping that I might learn more about the situation in the 17th and 18th century monarchy which I could put into relation to the Irish situation of that time. (I still have got this vision that I could do some additional research and write an article to benefit from my bloody 200-pages MA-thesis.) This was hardly the case. However, I could listen to all those papers and, even more interesting, during coffee and lunch breaks as well as during yesterday's dinner, had the chance to talk to some of those historians.

By the way, finally here is a photo of my new colleagues and me. Standing from left: Iwona (Poland / linguistics), < image "2024-colleagues" deleted > Premek (Czech Republic / international law), Kinga (Hungary / ethnology), sitting: Mathias (Austria / communication studies.

I hope that today evening (when most of them are attending a classical concert to which we are invited as well) I can get some recommendations on what I could read on this question I ask myself which I'll spare you now. (I think either I have to sign up for a history class this term or pursue this idea of doing a bit of my own research, because these todays again showed me that I need more historical input or output than the current job can offer me.)