Leading off the conference is Professor Keely Stauter-Halsted, who will address its general theme of “Migrations” in the plenary session. Stauter-Halsted is Professor of History and Hejna Family Chair in the History of Poland at the University of Illinois in Chicago, where she co-directs programming in Polish Studies. Her teaching and research examine issues of ethnicity, gender, and class in East Central Europe. Stauter-Halsted has published on topics including peasant nationalism, Polish-Jewish relations, prostitution, human trafficking, and global migration. Her first monograph, The Nation in the Village: The Genesis of Peasant National Identity in Austrian Poland (Cornell University Press, 2001) won the Orbis Prize in Polish history. Her second book, The Devil’s Chain: Prostitution and Social Control in Partitioned Poland (Cornell University Press, 2015) received the American Historical Association Joan Kelly Prize, the PIASA Oskar Halecki Award, and the Association for Women in Slavic History Heldt Prize, among others. Stauter-Halsted’s current project investigates refugees and forced migration in the Polish Second Republic immediately following World War I. She is spending academic year 2022-23 in Warsaw conducting research on a Fulbright fellowship.