How do cities and regions change after industry has retreated or undergone fundamental transformation? What consequences do deindustrialization and post-socialist transformation bring for the economy, society, and everyday life? And how have these processes shaped Europe in the past and today? These questions will be addressed by the international conference After Industry: Cities and Regions in Transformation, which will take place on 14–15 May 2026 in Prague.
The conference opens up one of the key issues of our time: how cities and regions are changing at a moment when industry is retreating, transforming, or taking on new forms — and how these processes have shaped European societies in the past and continue to shape them today. The meeting 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 connections and social impacts to current strategies of adaptation and development. It will show how the loss of industry affects everyday life, community identity, people’s relationship to place, and political attitudes. Above all, it will emphasize the long-term perspectives of these processes and their changing forms over time.
“Experts from across Central and Eastern Europe will gather in Prague, and we have also succeeded in bringing major international figures in this field of research into the programme,” says Ondřej Ševeček from the Institute of Philosophy of the Czech Academy of Sciences, one of the conference organizers.
The keynote speakers include Steven High of Concordia University, Montréal, a leading global expert on deindustrialization research, as well as Kerstin Brückweh of the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) and Rebecca Madgin of the University of Glasgow. In their lectures, they will offer perspectives on the transformation of industrial and post-industrial societies in different contexts, grounded in long-term research.
Public Debate on the Search for New Paths
The programme will also include a public panel debate, After Industry: Rethinking Local Economies, Memory, and Industrial Identity, which will take place on 14 May 2026 at 7:00 p.m. at Kampus Hybernská in Prague 1, in the Circular Hub. It will address questions of decline and renewal in industrial cities, transformations of local economies, identity, social inequalities, and the search for new paths of development in different parts of the world. It will connect an international perspective with deeper knowledge of the Central and Eastern European context. The debate will be chaired by Adéla Gjuričová, Director of the Institute of Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences.
Selected contributions will form the basis of a collective scholarly publication in English for an international audience, offering a deeper understanding of the dynamics of deindustrialization from both historical and contemporary perspectives.
The conference is made possible thanks to the support of the Jan Amos Komenský Operational Programme within the research project Urbanity: Inequality, Adaptation and Urban Public Space in Historical Perspective (CZ.02.01.01/00/23_025/0008735) and is organized in cooperation between 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. Among the international partners, the Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS) is also involved in the organization. The accompanying programme will take place with the support of the Czech Academy of Sciences’ Strategy AV21 programme, “The Power of Objects: Materiality between Past and Future.”
