Events and news

6 January

4 - 6 pm (c.t.)
online, Zoom

Randall Halle: European Values in the EU's Developmental, Energy and Climate
Policies

In cooperation with the Research and Education Network on Contestations to EU Foreign Policy ValEUs, the event takes place as part of the IFES Talk Series Human & Planet and the ValEUs Lecture Series. It combines interdisciplinary approaches to critically evaluate EU foreign policy with a special focus on its foundational set of principles, its contestations and emerging conflicts. In his lecture, Randall Halle will discuss the values conveyed in recent environmental policies of the European Union.

Randall Halle is an associated IFES member and Klaus W. Jonas Professor of German Film and Cultural Studies as well as director of the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh.

17. Dezember

16:00-18:00 Uhr (c.t.)
AM 203, Auditorium Maximum

Tetiana Gardashuk: Reflections on the Past and Future of the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant Area (KHPP)

In this lecture, the Ukrainian scholar Tetiana Gardashuk (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine/ KIU) explores the multiple roles of rivers, the historical, economic and cultural context of hydropower development, and dam building with a special focus on the case of the Dnipro Hydropower Cascade, which is part of the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant (KHPP), that was destroyed on June 6, 2023, in one of the biggest russian war crimes in Ukraine. The possible scenarios for the future of the area will be outlined. The event is part of the Talk Series Human & Planet.

The Human & Planet Talk Series aims to provide a platform for teaching, research and transfer on issues related to the socio-ecological crisis and climate change in a multidisciplinary and broad perspective. Based at the Viadrina Institute for European Studies, this open series welcomes contributions from colleagues and students interested in topics including but not limited to

• Global warming and climate change: social, economic and political dimensions
• Environmental disasters: loss of biodiversity, ocean acidification, changes in hydrological cycles (floods, droughts, dying rivers)
• Sustainability, mitigation & adaptation, de-growth: the diversity of frameworks aimed at addressing the current crisis at the levels of politics and civil society
• Extractivism, capitalism and global North-South inequalities
• Human-nature and/or culture-nature dualism: historical, anthropological and philosophical approaches
• The Anthropocene in the humanities, literature and the arts: ecocriticism and the search for languages for nature crisis and loss.

This series provides a permanent but flexible format for ongoing reflection and exchange on teaching and research on these topics. We are happy to co-organise related activities, to host reading groups and seminars, and to serve as a hub for connecting projects from the Viadrina.

Upcoming Dates:

17.12.2024, 16:15-17:30 pm: Reflections on the Past and Future of the Kakhovka Hydropower Plant Area (KHPP)
Tetiana Gardashuk (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine), in cooperation with the Competence Network Interdisciplinary Ukraininan Studies (KIU)

6.01.2025, 16:15-17:45 pm: European Values in the EU's Developmental, Energy and Climate Policies
Randall Halle (Pittsburgh University), in cooperation with the Jean Monnet Policy Network ValEUs

22.01.2025, 14:00-15:30 pm: Teaching and Research about the environment: Experiences, Perspectives, Keywords

Further details will be announced shortly.

27 November

5:30-6:30 pm
GD 102, Gräfin-Dönhoff-Gebäude

Climate protection after Baku: Reimund Schwarze in conversation

Moderation: Amelie Kutter

The first reports from COP29, the World Climate Conference in Baku, tell of windowless conference rooms and inconclusive discussions. The re-hosting of the climate conference in a country labelled as an oil dictatorship, the outcome of the US presidential election with a candidate who is decidedly in favour of fossil fuels and the absence of relevant political players raise the question of what prospects the conference in Baku can offer for climate protection.

What concrete measures were adopted to drive forward the transition from fossil fuels to renewable, climate-neutral technologies? How should the climate protection programmes, emission reductions and financing issues be assessed? What realistic prospects arise from the results of the climate conference?

Environmental economist and Viadrina expert Reimund Schwarze, who was on site as an observer at COP29, will provide first-hand insights. In his lecture, he will report on the negotiations, analyse the conference results and classify their potential impact on global climate policy. This analysis of the current situation will be moderated by Amelie Kutter, whose research focus is on the local implementation of sustainability transformations in the multi-level system.

The event marks the start of the Human & Planet discussion series, which will create a platform at IFES for environment-related topics such as the climate crisis, the Anthropocene and sustainability. Further activities in the winter semester 2024/25 will be announced shortly.

A recording of the event is available on the Viadrina media portal and a review has been published in the Viadrina-Logbuch.

The IFES will hold its first research seminar of the semester on 28 November. If you are interested in participating, please send an e-mail to: ifes@europa-uni.de.

Here you can find the programme of the most recent research seminar as well as the programme of the research seminar in march 2024.

Sonja Priebus: Post-transformational trajectories in Eastern Europe

DOI: https://doi.org/10.11584/IFES.3

Short summary: More than three decades after the political and economic upheavals in Central and Eastern Europe in 1989/90, the region is still often perceived as a homogeneous group of states whose members have undergone similar political developments and are struggling with similar challenges, some of which are related to the socialist legacy. This article examines and typologises the post-transformational trajectories of the European states of Eastern Europe since the completion of their transformations from around 1991/1992 to the present day. The central question is how regime development has proceeded in the states of the region and which development patterns can be recognised. The primary pattern in the regime development of a state in the post-transformation phase is referred to as the post-transformational trajectories (PTEP). Five ideal-typical PTEPs are inductively identified: 1) path-dependent autocratisation; 2) path changes in both directions (from democracy to autocracy and vice versa); 3) the non-consolidation of democracy; 4) path-dependent democratisation and 5) regime cycles. The PTEPs do not primarily record the result (i.e. regime type and regime quality at a certain point in time), but rather the process of regime development. This takes account of the fact that the development in the states was and still is very dynamic in most cases and that this dynamic is not reflected by a mere allocation to regime types, which only represent snapshots. The article shows that the states in the region have undergone very different developments in some cases and that we can therefore by no means speak of a homogeneous group.

Key words: post-transformation, regime dynamics, trajectories, democracy, autocracy

The IFES Working Papers Series is designed to disseminate initial results of ongoing research projects prior to publication in order to promote the exchange of ideas and academic debate. The papers are peer-reviewed and discussed at the IFES research seminar.

21 November 2024

1-2 pm
online, Zoom

Lunch Lecture: Why did Trump win (at such scale)?

The Viadrina Institute for European Studies (IFES) invites you to the following event as part of the Lunch Lectures series:

Sascha Münnich (EUV) in conversation with Randall Halle (Pittsburgh).

The result of the presidential election in the USA was in some ways to be expected and yet it came as a shock to many people: How was Donald Trump able to prevail against Kamala Harris by such a clear margin? What factors explain this popular support and, above all, what failures or mistakes by the ruling Democratic Party and its campaign strategy could have contributed to this outcome?

Sascha Münnich and Randall Halle will discuss these questions with each other and with the audience from a social and cultural science perspective and analyse them on the basis of current surveys and their experiences on the ground: What can we learn from this election, including for the future of Europe?

The discussion will be held in English, questions can be asked in German.

13-15 September 2024

First Annual ValEUs Conference: The Contestation of European Values from Afar

European values play a significant role in shaping the attachment of citizens and elites to the European Union (EU). They are central to the EU's self-definition of where it stands. And they set the orientation of its foreign policy. Yet far from being universally accepted and promoted, the EU's goals have increasingly been questioned. What is the actual role of the EU's values? Are they too broad or too narrowly defined; are they at times unable to generate a unique civic identity for the European people? Do they provide the EU a unique voice on the global stage, or have they instead led the EU to marginalise itself? Is the EU able to properly fulfil its own mandates? Does the EU actually live up to the values it promotes?

If many of these contestations have been raised from within the EU, too little attention has been given to how they are perceived in non-European contexts. The goal of the first ValEUs Conference is an analysis of the ways individuals, groups, and elites in American, Asian, African, and Middle Eastern countries perceive these values and, in return, how these external contestations are understood by European elites. Are these values perceived as hints of Europe's former colonialism? What role do they play in the resurgence of Russia's Slavophile legacy and the country's aggressive foreign policy? In light of what appears to be tomorrow's world, can we expect European values to appeal beyond the EU's formal structure or instead to increase the gap with non-European nations? Do these values have the potential to transcend cultural and civilizational differences, or are they instead a source of Europe's marginalisation?

The investigation of these questions (among others) will be integral to the First Annual ValEUs Conference. This conference will be held at Nazarbayev University, located in Astana, Kazakhstan, from September 13-15, 2024.

For more details, please check the conference programme or visit https://valeus.eu/

The Polish Studies Association (PSA) invites you to the following book discussion:

24 September 2024

6 pm (cest) on Zoom

Architektki PRL-u. Komunistki, literatura i emancypacja kobiet w powojennej Polsce (Female architects of communist Poland: Communist women, literature and women's emancipation in post-WWII Poland) by Agnieszka Mrozik

In Architektki PRL-u (Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, 2022) Agnieszka Mrozik reflects on leftist women intellectuals, politicians, and activists, who after the Second World War, co-created the project of Poland's socialist modernisation and championed the emancipation of women. At the same time, she analyses the absence of communist women in the history of women and the women's movement in Poland.

Discussants:

Stanislav Holubec (Institute of History, Czech Academy of Sciences)
Agnieszka Mrozik (Institute of Literary Research, Polish Academy of Sciences; European University Viadrina in Frankfurt/Oder)
Anna Muller (University of Michigan-Dearborn)
Magda Szcześniak (Institute of Polish Culture, University of Warsaw)
Agata Zysiak (Research Centre for the History of Transformations, University of
Vienna; Institute of Sociology, University of Łódź)

Moderated by Natalia Jarska (Institute of History, Polish Academy of Sciences)

The discussion will be held in English. To register, please click here.

16 July 2024

13:00-14:00 (s.t.)
GD lecture theatre 04, Gräfin-Dönhoff-Building

Border Controls between Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice - A Scientific Inventory

In cooperation with the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION, this present-day analysis at lunchtime/research factory is dedicated to the ongoing controls at the German-Polish border and their effects in Frankfurt (Oder).

With Dr Markus Engler (DeZiM) and Lea Sophie Christinck (EUV/ DeZiM),
authors of the report on the status of border controls at the German-Polish border

The temporary stationary controls introduced by the Federal Ministry of the Interior at the borders with Poland, the Czech Republic and Switzerland also affect the German-Polish border crossing in Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice. Since October 2023, the Federal Police have been carrying out the measure at the city bridge, which has been extended several times. The stated aim of the checks is to curb "irregular migration" and combat smuggling by preventing unauthorised entry attempts before they enter the country. The measures have been criticised in various ways. While some criticise the measures for having too little or no effect, others criticise the risk of discrimination and racial profiling during implementation.

What consequences can now be recognised in practice? The Green Party parliamentary group has commissioned an expert report to assess the situation. With our guests and authors of the study Marcus Engler and Lea Sophie Christinck from the Centre for Integration and Migration Research Berlin (DeZIM), we would like to discuss the state of affairs from a scientific perspective. How can the measures be categorised in terms of their effectiveness? How are the discourses on security and migration changing? What impact do local restrictions have on the understanding of European values and the right to freedom of movement in Europe?

A report on the event has been published in the Viadrina Logbook and the recording is available on the Viadrina media portal.

In her two-year teaching research project 'Transformations towards sustainability in the state of Brandenburg', Amelie Kutter and her students are investigating how actors in the region implement or contest sustainability policy in the areas of water, forest, energy and food. What ideas and practices do experts, governments and local future-makers develop as they establish new ways of producing and living? With the help of document analyses, interviews and field trips, students are guided in a series of research seminars to explore current perspectives on sustainable transformation. The seminars are organised according to the philosophy of challenge-based learning and explore challenges and solution scenarios in collaboration with local stakeholders. Most recently, a Brandenburg agricultural cooperative was supported in the planning of a solar moor project; in the coming semester, scenarios for cross-border climate-friendly mobility and riverbank design will be developed together with the Frankfurt-Słubice Cooperation Centre.

On 10 October, Amelie Kutter spoke about the project with other future-makers at the Pluriversum at Storkow Castle.

19 June 2024

14:30-16:00 (s.t.)
GD 07

Remembering transitions across East Central Europe: Preliminary findings from the field research in Poland and Germany

Presentation by Agnieszka Mrozik (MES)  as part of the cultural studies colloquium.

The talk aims to present transitions across East Central Europe.

The talk aims to present, on the one hand, the collaborative research project “Reconstituting publics through remembering transitions: Facilitating Critical Engagement with the 1980–90s on Local and Transnational Scales” – its objectives and the methodology adopted, and on the other hand to share preliminary findings from the fieldwork in Poland (Gdańsk and Łódź) and Germany (Berlin and Eisenhüttenstadt). The project investigates how dialogic memory practices can be facilitated and developed around memories of the 1980-90s political, socioeconomic, and cultural transformations in (post)socialist Europe. By “dialogic remembering,” the research team refers to the processes that create a space for sharing varied memories – voicing difference and dissent, relating to stories of others, and potentially creating new narratives that interlink divergent visions of the past. In my talk, I will not only discuss what memories were shared by the participants of the workshops we organized in four locations in Poland and Germany, as well as the participants of the discussions after the film Crystal Swan (2018), which we screened at the museums we collaborated with, but I will also try to answer the question of whether and how the concept of “dialogic remembering” works in practice.

Agnieszka Mrozik is an Associate Professor of Literary Studies at the Institute of Literary Research of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a guest professor at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder) in the summer semester of 2023/24. She is the author of Architektki PRL-u: Komunistki, literatura i emancypacja kobiet w powojennej Polsce [Women architects of the Polish People’s Republic: Communist women, literature, and women’s emancipation in postwar Poland] (Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, 2022) and Akuszerki transformacji: Kobiety, literatura i władza w Polsce po 1989 roku [Midwives of the transformation: Women, literature, and power in post-1989 Poland] (Wydawnictwo IBL PAN, 2012). She has co-authored and co-edited several collective volumes, including Reassessing Communism: Concepts, Culture, and Society in Poland, 1944–1989 (CEU Press, 2021), Gender, Generations, and Communism in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond (Routledge, 2020), and Historical Memory of Central and East European Communism (Routledge, 2018). Together with Dr Ksenia Robbe (University of Groningen, PI), Dr. Andrei Zavadski (TU Dortmund) and Nora Korte (“Transition Dialogue” network, Berlin) she is working on the research project “Reconstituting Publics through Remembering Transitions: Facilitating Critical Engagement with the 1980–90s on Local and Transnational Scales” (2021–2024), awarded by the Network of European Institutes for Advanced Study (NetIAS) as part of the Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) Programme.

18:00-20:00 (c.t.)
HG 201b

Aspect blindness: The problem of migration from Wittgenstein's perspective

Presentation by Witold Jacorzynski as part of the cultural studies colloquium.

In his presentation Witold Jacorzinsky will examine the problem of the immigrant as an Other. The otherness will be considered in its four different senses: the other as no-I, the other as a stranger, the other as an enemy and the other as a fellowman or a neighbour. As a case study Witold Jacorzinsky will analyse the migrants´ situation on the Polish-Belorussian and Mexican-Guatemalan borders. Those two cases will be compared through the use of wittgensteinian concepts such as seeing- as, aspect blindness and family resemblances.

Witold Jacorzynski studied philosophy and anthropology at the University of Warsaw, Poland, and holds a doctorate in humanities. His research focuses on anthropological theory, philosophy and ethnography of the indigenous peoples of Chiapas and Oaxaca. He has been a guest lecturer at the universities of Notre Dame (USA), Leipzig (Germany) and Castilla-La Mancha (Spain). Witold Jacorzynski has been a senior researcher at the renowned anthropological institute CIESAS (Mexico) since 1998. From April to June 2024, he is a visiting researcher at the Institute for European Studies (IFES) as a fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

30 April 2024

13:00-14:30 (s.t.)
GD 102, Gräfin-Dönhoff-Building

20 Years of EU Membership - (Future) Perspectives from East Central Europe

Panel discussion in cooperation with the Viadrina Center of Polish and Ukrainian Studies (VCPU):

Timm Beichelt (MES)
Wojciech Gagatek (Warsaw)
Anja Hennig (IFES)
Sonja Priebus (IFES)
Falk Flade (VCPU)

Moderation: Susann Worschech (IFES/KIU)

4 May 2024 marks the twentieth anniversary of the accession of ten countries to the European Union. It was the largest simultaneous round of EU enlargement to date. It not only changed the countries that joined, but also the Union itself. The accession of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, the three Baltic states, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus to the EU was celebrated as European unification and was often interpreted as a "return to Europe", particularly in Poland. However, the image of a "return" obscures the extent to which this enlargement is linked to the successful imitation of Western governance and social models and that the so-called EU enlargement to the east was part of a pan-European transformation process that is still too little recognised and understood today - but which holds important lessons for future rounds of enlargement - especially with regard to Ukraine.

In this panel discussion, Viadrina experts want to look ahead and ask how institutional and social cooperation has developed in a united Europe, how the conditionality of the EU has had an impact and is assessed today, what historical experiences the countries of Central and Eastern Europe have brought to the EU and what political emotions were and are associated with the accession process.

All interested parties are welcome to attend (also with their brown bag lunch...).

The recording of the event is available on the Viadrina media portal.

In the new issue of the Journal of Illiberalism Studies Anja Hennig addresses questions of the representation of 'illiberal actors' in academic discourse in her essay "The Ambivalence of the Liberal-Illiberal Dynamic". Against the background of specific experiences with the 'Monday demonstrations' in Frankfurt (Oder), Hennig explains, among other things, which actors and statements should be given a platform in the academic context, where and which red lines should be drawn if necessary, and how the academic discourse in general can relate to 'illiberal' actors - questions that are central to the self-positioning of academics.