Events and news

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 marginalize itself? Is the EU able to properly fulfill 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 marginalization? 

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, pleasecheck the conference program 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 modernization and championed the emancipation of women. At the same time, she analyzes 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 Center 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

Grenzkontrollen zwischen Frankfurt (Oder) und Słubice – Eine wissenschaftliche Bestandsaufnahme (in German)

In cooperation with the Viadrina Center B/ORDERS IN MOTION, this brown bag lecture/ research factory is dedicated to the ongoing controls at the German-Polish border and their impact in Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice.

With Dr Markus Engler (Deutsches Zentrum für Integrations- und Migrationsforschung (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 German Federal Police have been carrying out controls at the city border bridge, a measure that has been extended several times. The declared aim of the controls 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 consider that they have too little or no effect, others criticise the risk of discrimination and racial profiling during their implementation.

What consequences can now be recognised in practice? The Green Party parliamentary group in Brandenburg 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 discussed 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 currently changing? What impact do the local restrictions have on the understanding of the EU declared values and the right to freedom of movement in the continent?

Read a report about the event in Viadrina Logbuch (in German) or find the video recording on the Viadrina media portal.

In her two-year teaching and 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 designed 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 Center.

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

19 June 2024

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) Program.

11 June 2024

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

20 Jahre EU-Mitgliedschaft – (Zukunfts-)Perspektiven aus Ostmitteleuropa (in German)

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)  

On 4 May 2024, ten countries will be joining the European Union for the twentieth time. 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 EU accession of Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the three Baltic states as well as Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus was celebrated as European unification and was often interpreted, particularly in Poland, as a return to Europe. However, the image of the 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.

 A video recording of the event is available on the Viadrina media portal. 

In the new issue of the Journal of Illiberalism Studies Anja Hennig addresses the representation of 'illiberal actors' in academic discourse in the essay "The Ambivalence of the Liberal-Illiberal Dynamic". Against the background of specific experiences with the 'Monday demonstrations' in Frankfurt (Oder), Hennig explains 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 – all questions that are central for  the self-positioning of academics.