Opening conference - Lithuania and France : a distance neighbourhood – a shared experience

Speakers from France and Lithuania will reflect on how shared experiences such as cultural epochs, artistic currents, innovations in thinking, creative breakthroughs of minorities, and controversies of historical memory are creating a neighbourhood that is not geographically based, but rather is a proximity of challenges, explorations and discoveries.

Three thematic groups – Enlightenment, Modernity and Memory – will cover the aspects of democratic political culture and the pursuit of freedom, important for Lithuania and France as creators of European values. The conference will be held in French and Lithuanian languages, supported by the simultaneous translation.

The conference will be held in French and Lithuanian languages, supported by the simultaneous translation.

Program

• 17.30-18.00 : Inaugural speeches
• 18.00-18.30 : Musical interlude: United Choir of Lithuanian Choirs & Chœur et Orchestre Sorbonne Université (COSU)
• 18.30-19.00 : Plenary lecture 1: From the Last Medieval Kingdom to Modern Democracy: Lithuania’s Road to Europe by Rimvydas Petrauskas
• 19.00-19.30 : Plenary lecture 2: Natural and sacred? Human rights and the Enlightenment by Céline Spector

Program download at the bottom of the page.

Organization

General Curator

• Virginija Vitkienė, PhD in art history and art criticism, curator of contemporary art exhibitions (2004-2022), artistic director of the Kaunas Biennial (2009-2017), general director of Kaunas 2022 - European Capital of Culture (2018-2023)

Organizational Committee

• Marija Drėmaitė, professor, Vilnius University
• Artūras Vasiliauskas, doctor and vice-rector, Vilnius University
• French Institute
• Vilnius University

Speakers

• Prof. Rimvydas Petrauskas was inaugurated as Rector of Vilnius University on 1 April 2020. His research area is the 13th–16th c. political and social history of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. He studied and did internships at the Universities of Basel, Berlin, Greifswald and Krakow, the German Institute of History in Warsaw, and the Herder Institute in Marburg (Germany). He has published monographs and articles from the field of research in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Also, prof. R. Petrauskas is a member of several international academic organisations, and a member of the editorial boards of ten scientific journals. Rector prof. R. Petrauskas is a member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences, president of the Lithuanian National Committee of Historians, member of the International Historical Commission of the German Order, former Dean of the Faculty of History (2012–2020), Chairman of the Research Council of Lithuania Board, Chairman of the Lithuanian Language Research Dissemination Programme, Member of the Lithuanian Council for Higher Education.
• Prof. Céline Spector has been teaching at the Department of Philosophy of the Faculté des Lettres of Sorbonne University since 2016. She has been instructing with Thierry Chopin a course at the College of Europe in Bruges ("Democracy, Sovereignty and European Societies") for a year. Between 2020 and 2021, Prof. Céline Spector contributed to the MOOC "European Citizenship" representing Sorbonne University within the Alliance 4EU+. She is a member of the scientific team "Sciences, Norms, Democracy" and an honorary member of the Institut Universitaire de France. Her research interests are political philosophy, philosophy of law; enlightenment philosophy and its legacy; philosophy of democracy in the context of Europe. In 2011, she was awarded the Prix de l'Académie Montesquieu for Montesquieu. Liberty, Law and History. CNRS awarded her a silver medal in 2024.
• Virginija Vitkienė, general curator of Lithuanian season in France, PhD in art history and art criticism

Event partners

This event is organized in association with the Faculté des Lettres de Sorbonne Université, Vilnius University, the Lithuanian Cultural Institute, in close collaboration with the Lithuanian Embassy in France, the French Embassy in Lithuania and the French Institute of Lithuania, under the aegis of the French Ministries of Europe and Foreign Affairs and of Culture, and the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania.