EUROPE TODAY: CHALLENGES & OPPORTUNITIES Yale European Studies Graduate Fellows Conference APRIL 16-17, 2021
Virtual Conference Registration: https://bit.ly/EuropeToday_Conference
We take this opportunity to show our sincere appreciation to the Planning Committee for conceptualizing and organizing the conference: Elena Adasheva-Klein, Yale University Christina Andriotis, Yale University Orel Beilinson, Yale University Marguerite Bertheau, University of Cambridge Lisa Sophie Fenner, University of Cambridge Morgan Forde, University of Cambridge Jacqueline Georgis, Yale University Marc Ibáñez Díaz, Yale University Jesslene Lee, National University of Singapore Nadia Kalisiak, University of Cambridge Ryan Nabil, Yale University Asia Neupane, Yale University Aniket Sangwan, University of Cambridge
The planning committee is formed from graduate students of the Yale European Studies Graduate Student Fellows Network, graduate students from the University College London (UCL), institutions from The International Alliance of Research Universities (IARU), Fox International Fellowship, the Baden-Württemberg Exchange Program, and the staff of the European Studies Council of the MacMillan Center at Yale.
SCHEDULE FRIDAY, APRIL 16 WELCOME REMARKS 9:00 AM By Julia Adams, Professor of Sociology and International & Area Studies; Acting Chair of the European Studies Council (Yale University) PANEL I: PROTEST AND CONTENTIOUS POLITICS IN EUROPE 9 : 1 0 A M Co-Chairs: Lisa Sophie Fenner (University of Cambridge) and Jacqueline Georgis (Yale University) Yelyzaveta Monastyrova (University of Glasgow) Gabriel Rosenman (École Normale Supérieure (ENS) and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) (Paris, France)) Abigail Skalka (Harvard University) Discussant: Maria J. Hierro, Lecturer in Political Science (Yale University) PANEL II: THE THIN LINE BETWEEN DEMOCRACY 10:30 AM AND AUTHORITARIANISM: EUROPE 2020 Chair: Nadia Kalisiak (University of Cambridge) Anna-Dobrawa Kicińska (University of Cambridge) Carla Montigny (University College London and Higher School of Economics (Moscow, Russia)) Céleste Pagniello (University of Cambridge) Discussant: Milan Svolik, Professor of Political Science (Yale University)
KEYNOTE ADDRESS
By Radosław Sikorski
12:00 PM
Member of the European Parliament Webinar Registration: https://bit.ly/Keynote-RadosławSikorski
PANEL III: EUROPEAN ECONOMIC RECOVERY Chair: Aniket Sangwan (University of Cambridge) Despoina Georgiou (University of Cambridge) Dan Mocanu (University of Cambridge) Discussant: David Cameron, Professor of Political Science
1:30 PM
3:00 PM PANEL IV: EUROPE AND GLOBAL GOVERNANCE Chair: Ryan Nabil (Yale University; Sciences Po (Paris, France)) Ivana Damjanovic (Australian National University) Ryan Nabil (Yale University; Sciences Po (Paris, France)) Pedro Schilling de Carvalho (University of Cambridge & Harvard Law School) Discussant: Richard Balme, Professor in Political Science (Sciences Po (Paris, France))
Conference Registration: https://bit.ly/EuropeToday_Conference
SCHEDULE SATURDAY, APRIL 17 PANEL V: EU AND GREAT POWER DIPLOMACY 9:00 AM Co-Chairs: Marc Ibáñez Díaz (Yale University) and Jesslene Lee (National University of Singapore) Alessia Caputo (University at Albany; Bocconi University (Milan, Italy)) and Martina Spatuzzo (Rockefeller College; Bocconi University (Milan, Italy)) Claude Ewert (University of Cambridge) Senni Mut-Tracy (University of Helsinki) Discussant: Julio Guinea Bonillo, Professor (Universidad Rey Juan Carlos (Madrid, Spain)) PANEL VI: BUDS OF RESEARCH 10:30 AM Chair: Orel Beilinson (Yale University) Mourad Boumlik (Yale University) Giorgi Buzaladze (Yale University) Peter Chen (Yale University) Zachary Cho (Yale University) Meagan Ford (Yale University) Elijah Plyat (Yale University) Ali Salmenbayev (Yale University) Casey Smith (Yale University) Tamar Todria (Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University (Georgia)) PANEL VII: EASTERN EUROPEAN MIGRATION TO 12:30 PM CENTRAL EUROPE Chair: Marguerite Bertheau (University of Cambridge) Daniel Gebel (Federal Institute forCulture and Historyof the Germans in Eastern Europe (BKGE), Oldenburg (Germany)) Cristiana Lucchetti (Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich) Fernando A. Remache Vinueza (University of Glasgow) Discussant: Jannis Panagiotidis, Professor and Scientific Director of Research Center for the History of Transformations (University of Vienna) PANEL VIII: URBAN SUSTAINABILITY AND GOVERNANCE IN 2:00 PM THE NORTH: PERSPECTIVES FROM EUROPE AND EURASIA Co-Chairs: Elena Adasheva-Klein (Yale University) and Morgan Forde (University of Cambridge) Elena Adasheva-Klein (Yale University) Morgan Forde (University of Cambridge) Kelsey Jones (George Washington University) Masha Monakhova (Arizona State University) Discussant: Robert W. Orttung, Research Professor of International Affairs (George Washington University)
Conference Registration: https://bit.ly/EuropeToday_Conference
KEYNOTE SPEAKER RADOSŁAW SIKORSKI Member of the European Parliament
Webinar Registration: https://bit.ly/Keynote-RadosławSikorski
Radosław (Radek) Sikorski is a Member of the European Parliament for his native KuyavianPomeranian region of Poland. Member of the Committee on Foreign Affairs (AFET), the Special Committee on Artificial Intelligence in a Digital Age (AIDA) and the Subcommittee on Security and Defense (SEDE), he also chairs the Delegation for relations with the United States. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University and a Distinguished Statesman at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. Formerly, he served as Poland’s Minister of Defense (2005-2007), Minister of Foreign Affairs (2007-2014) and Marshal of the Sejm of the Republic of Poland (2014-2015). Together with Carl Bildt, he initiated the EU’s Eastern Partnership. He also proposed establishing the European Endowment for Democracy and the Solidarity Prize. In 2014, at the height of mass protests against Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, he led the EU mission to Kiev, which stopped the bloodshed on the Maidan. In 2012 Foreign Policy magazine named him one of its Top 100 Global Thinkers “for telling the truth, even when it’s not diplomatic.”
SPEAKER/PANEL CHAIRS ABSTRACTS & BIOGRAPHIES ELENA ADASHEVA-KLEIN Elena Adasheva-Klein is a Ph.D. candidate in Sociocultural Anthropology at Yale University. Her academic interests lie at the intersection of environmental anthropology and Indigenous Studies in contemporary Russia. Her doctoral research explores humanenvironment relations and governmentality in the Siberian Arctic. Elena holds a B.A. in Anthropology and Studio Art from Hunter College of the City University of New York. She was an Eva Kastan Grove Fellow at the Roosevelt House Public Policy Institute and Ronald E. McNair Scholar. In 2019, Elena received the Summer Institute in Museum Anthropology Fellowship from the Smithsonian Institution, where she researched the Department of Anthropology’s collection of Siberian objects.
What is Severnyĭ Gorod? The Urban Nature of the Russian Northern City Despite the Arctic often imagined as a place scarcely inhabited by humans, a majority of the Arctic population resides in cities. In Russia, the North is the most urbanized region in the country with the largest northern cities in the world. Examining the phenomenon of Arctic urbanism, scholars point out the unique characteristics of the northern city. Drawing from the notion of Arctic urban nature, this paper examines city-nature entanglements in the scholarship on Russian northern cities. Multiple interrelations between the northern city and the northern environment problematize conventional meanings of urbanity and offer new possibilities for reimagining the city.
OREL BEILINSON Orel Beilinson is a social and cultural historian of modern Central and Eastern Europe, broadly defined. Drawing on a broad interdisciplinary training, he hopes to integrate sociolinguistic insight, archival research, and formal methods drawn from sociology to write cultural and social histories. His current project is tentatively called End-of-Life Decisions: Understanding, Regulating and Preventing Suicide in Eastern Europe, 1870-1939. He aims to reconstruct the meanings endowed in suicide in Eastern Europe, mainly in the Habsburg Empire and its successor states, and different trajectories and corpora of knowledge developed and recruited by historical actors to understand, regulate and prevent it. For this purpose, he is exploring sources ranging from police records and psychiatric case files to newspapers and literary works and methodologies that include both distant reading based on statistical exploration and, in the other extreme of the scale, a close reading of archival sources.
MARGUERITE BERTHEAU
Marguerite is an MPhil Student in Modern European History at the University of Cambridge. Her current research explores migration form the Eastern Bloc to West Germany around the fall of the iron curtain and its ensuing changes to German Asylum Law. She has obtained her undergraduate degree at Albert-Ludwigs-Universität in Freiburg, Germany with her bachelor-dissertation looking into the legal frameworks for the immigration of Russian-Speaking Jews to Germany between 1990 and 2005.
ALESSIA CAPUTO
Alessia Caputo is a dual-degree candidate attending the MSc in Economics and Management of Government and International Organizations at Bocconi University and the MPA at the University at Albany, State University of New York. Her interest in economics, international, and societal matters began during her Bachelor’s in Economics and Social Science at Bocconi University. Her research focus also includes Public Health, to the extent that she serves as a researcher for the Healthcare Hub Bocconi. Currently, she is working in the Office of the New York State Senator Todd Kaminsky.
MARTINA SPATUZZO
Martina Spatuzzo is a second-year MSc student in Economics and Management of Government and International Organizations at Bocconi University. Her research interests include International Health Economics and Public Health Policy. In 2021 she moved to the United States, where she is completing an MPA degree at Rockefeller College of Public Affairs and Policy at the State University of New York while working for the New York State Assembly.
Stepping Out of US-China Power Play by Stepping Towards European Green Leadership (co-written with Alessia Caputo) Since its admission as a member of the World Trade Organization, China started challenging the American power in the international arena. Europe lays in the midst of this power play, torn between the historic alliance with the United States committed to safeguarding democratic values, and the opportunities China embodies as a rising economic power. First, the paper analyses how the evolution of this three-party relationship has affected the European economic power. The European Union has faced a negative trade shock resulting from protectionist trends and a negative technology shock stemming from the slowdown of the manufacturing industry. The paper argues that the future of EU foreign policy in response to the US-China strategic competition is to establish a new green leadership. However, a green new leadership will translate into strategic autonomy only by securing fair competition, especially concerning technology and intellectual property. In conclusion, the paper recommends the European Union to enhance multilateralism and reform certain existing international institutions.
IVANA DAMJANOVIC
Dr Ivana Damjanovic completed her PhD at the Australian National University in November 2020. Her thesis examined the role of the EU in the global reform of international investment governance and dispute settlement. Ivana is a qualified lawyer in Australia and her native Croatia and has expertise in international law and international relations. Her professional background encompasses nine years as a career diplomat for the Government of Croatia, with diplomatic postings in Europe and Australia, as well as research and policy roles for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where she participated in tasks related to Croatia’s accession to the EU. Ivana is an Assistant Lecturer in law at the University of Canberra and participates in a number of research projects on EU trade as a Visiting Research Fellow of the ANU Centre for European Studies.
The ‘geopolitical’ EU and the rule of law: An opportunity or a challenge in a changing world trading order? EU foreign policy has sought to promote multilateral rules-based order in international relations as one of its core values and objectives. EU engagement at bilateral level is focused on complementing multilateralism by establishing frameworks of cooperation based on rules. EU values, objectives, and regulatory standards are promoted through an array of agreements, in particular in the area of trade. The EU processes have thus been geared towards reducing the impact of politics through legal rules, with European external power focused on the power of norms rather than military gains. However, in a more hostile multipolar and less multilateral world, the EU narrative is also shifting towards ‘strategic autonomy’. The new EU ‘geopolitical’ Commission envisages to strengthen EU’s global position through coherent policies, and more strategically focused engagement in foreign relations. However, the EU as a strong geopolitical player in a global rules-based order is not without its internal and external challenges. This paper explores how is the new EU’s geopolitical approach reflected in EU trade policy and how it seeks to reconcile conceptual contradictions between geopolitics and the ‘rule of law’ in international relations.
ANNA-DOBRAWA KICIŃSKA
Anna-Dobrawa Kicinska is an architect and urban planner, currently pursuing MPhil in Architecture and Urban Studies at University of Cambridge. She holds a MSc degree from Delft University of Technology and a BSc degree from Warsaw University of Technology. During her research in Cambridge, she pursues topics of civic agency and participation in the context of development of cities and shaping of urban identity. She is especially interested in how public space and architecture are affected by systemic changes, such as 1989 transition from communist to capitalist economy in Warsaw.
Architecture and Democracy: Enclosing of the Parliament Buildings’ Complex in Warsaw Since the 2015 parliamentary election, Warsaw has been a site of repeated protests, the biggest since the overthrow of communism. Ever since – officially to prevent terrorist attacks the government has introduced a series of barriers steadily restricting access to the Parliament Buildings’ Complex, which had been a semi-public space since 1945. In November 2020, the Parliament’s Office announced a tender for a 3-meter-tall gate and fence securing the Complex. Such a barrier would be a physical embodiment of growing separation between the government and the people. This essay aims to study consecutive phases of the spatial separation of the Complex and compare it to trends in governmental architecture in Europe. Providing security is one of the main design issues in such buildings – but so is symbolising the values of democracy. It is possible for the two to coexist, as visible in the cases of Reichstag in Berlin or the new American Embassy in London. In times when the state of democracy in Poland is questioned by its citizens, a fence is a symbol of the government being afraid of its own people. This essay uses theoretical literature to prove that such architecture undermines the values of democracy.
CLAUDE EWERT
Claude Ewert is a second-year PhD student at the Faculty of History at the University of Cambridge and a member of Wolfson College. His PhD dissertation is looking at EC-USSR relations from 1973 to 1991, under the supervision of Dr Mark B. Smith, senior lecturer at King’s College. Claude Ewert holds a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree from the University of Luxembourg. His BA thesis looked at Luxembourgish relations with the Soviet Union in the immediate post-war period from 1944 to 1956, and his MA thesis dealt with EEC-USSR relations from 1958 to 1972. He worked as a student research assistant for both the Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C2DH) and the Institute of History (IHIST) at the University of Luxembourg.
From Flexible to Flawed: How the Common Commercial Policy Changed EECUSSR Trade Relations Drawing on the conference’s panel ‘EU and Great Power Diplomacy’ this paper is looking at the historical dimensions of the EU’s relations with Russia. In 1958, these relations occurred between the European Economic Community (EEC) and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) and were mostly focusing on trade. In the subsequent years of the creation of the EEC, the latter was trying to establish somewhat amicable relations with the USSR, supporting trade negotiations of EEC member states by not insisting on EEC clauses in the trade agreements. By the beginning of the 1970s, the Common Commercial Policy (CCP) was soon to come into effect, giving the European Commission far more leverage in EEC-USSR trade relations. The narrative was also shifting from establishing bilateral trade relations between the USSR and the individual EEC member states to multilateral relations between the EEC and the Comecon (Council for Mutual Economic Assistance). However, these negotiations were an on/off process, only to be finalised in 1988. These delays, causing discontent between the EEC member states and the Commission, were often due to internal clashes in the latter, as one could not agree on a foreign (trade) policy with the USSR.
LISA SOPHIE FENNER
Lisa Sophie Fenner is a PhD student at the University of Cambridge. Her academic interests lie in the politicisation of European integration, transnational social movements and the effect of protest on policy-making in the EU. Lisa holds a BA in Political Science from the Free University Berlin and an MPhil in International Relations and Politics from the University of Cambridge. She was a German Academic Scholarship Foundation Scholar and an Honorary Benefactors’ Scholar at St John’s College, Cambridge. She now holds the YouGov-Studentship at the Department of Politics and International Studies.
MORGAN FORDE
Morgan Forde is completing a Master of Philosophy in Architecture and Urban Studies at the University of Cambridge. Her research focuses on the urban theoretical and spatial relationships formed between Black and Soviet communities in the 20th century. In Fall 2021, she will begin pursuing a doctoral degree at the Harvard University Graduate School of Design.
As Foundations Thaw: Climate-Responsive Urbanism in Norilsk, Russia The Arctic city of Norilsk, Russia is one of the northern most settlements on the planet. Historically a heavy-metals mining town and a corridor for the fossil fuel industry, it is also one of the most polluted. In addition to the historic degradation of the local environment, the ongoing effects of climate change, specifically melting permafrost, threatens Norilsk’s very foundations. According to a 2016 estimate, 60% of the city’s buildings are sinking or otherwise facing significant structural damage as the frozen earth melts away underneath them. This paper will contextualize the challenges facing Norilsk in light of Russia’s 2020 National Plan for Adaptation to Climate Change in the Arctic and survey the urban-architectural interventions put in place to shore up the city’s built environment at present and for the future.
DANIEL GEBEL
Daniel Gebel is a doctoral student at the Federal Institute for Culture and History of the Germans in Eastern Europe (BKGE), Oldenburg – PhD-Project: Everyday Life and Memory. Russian-German and Jewish “Soviet baggage” after the Emigration. In 4/2018, I received my Master of Arts in Comparative Modern History at the AlbertLudwig-Universität Freiburg – Master thesis: The Russian parliamentary election 1993 in the mirror of the German press. In 10/2014, I received my Bachelor of Arts in History and Slavic Studies at the Carl von Ossietzky-Universität Oldenburg. My academic and research interests are the following: History of Russia with an emphasis on the 1990s, Nationality conflicts in the 19th and 20th century, and History of diplomacy in the 19th and 20th century.
Everyday Life and Memory. Russian-German and Jewish "Soviet baggage" After the Emigration How do Russian-Germans and Jewish contingent refugees in Germany remember their Soviet everyday life, and what significance does this period have for their current self-image? These questions are the focus of the project "Everyday Life and Memory". The thesis is put forward that although both groups have a different view of the late Soviet history of events, they both show parallel behavioral patterns in their everyday life after arriving in Germany, which are reflected in aspects such as the use of the Russian language in everyday life or a passive attitude towards political participation, and can be described as "Soviet baggage". Since both nationalities have repeatedly experienced discrimination in the USSR, historiography has often focused on the collective suffering and the resulting mass emigration in the 1980s and 1990s. This project wants to focus on the individual experiences of Germans and Jews, which often signal an accompanying assimilation to the Soviet majority society, and reasearch how those ambivalent memories of the late Soviet Union manifest in their everyday life in Germany.
JACQUELINE GEORGIS
Jacqueline Georgis is a PhD candidate in ethnomusicology within the Department of Music. Her work explores ideas of cultural hybridity and transnational exchange within the Lusophone-Atlantic. She is particularly interested in researching these themes through the lens of a contemporary Afro-Portuguese-inspired electronic dance music genre from Lisbon, Portugal, asking how this and other electronic musics challenge and re-imagine neo-colonial sociocultural and political configurations in Portugal. Before coming to Yale, Jacqueline received her B.M. in cello performance from the School of Music, Ithaca College (2013), and continued cello performance study under the tutelage of Geneviève Teulieres-Sommer at the École Normale de Musique de Paris, Alfred Cortot (2013-2015) in Paris, France.
DESPOINA GEORGIOU Despoina Georgiou is a PhD candidate at the University of Cambridge, specializing in EU Labour and Competition Law. In 2019, she was a visiting researcher at Harvard Law School. She currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of the Cambridge Law Review and its undergraduate law journal, De Lege Ferenda. Miss Georgiou has received multiple prestigious awards and scholarships such as the Cambridge European Scholarship, the Cambridge Arts and Humanities Research Council Studentship and the Onassis Foundation Scholarship. She has authored various articles (most recently, “‘Business-Risk Assumption’ as a Criterion for the Determination of EU Employment Status: A Critical Evaluation” published in 2021 in the Industrial Law Journal) and has participated in many conferences (such as ILO, CERIC, and CILJ conferences).
The ‘Uberification’ of the European Labour Market and the Future of Work: Challenges and Opportunities Recent market structural trends, like the growing importance of the service sector and the evolution of contractual arrangements in favour of franchising and outsourcing, have left many workers standing uncomfortably in the ‘grey’ area between employment and self-employment. As shadow-economies emerge, online platforms (i.e., Uber, Deliveroo, AmazonTurk) that arguably exercise labour-brokering functions become outlaws in a high-tech Wild West, circumventing European labour and social protection legislation and shifting the risk of running a business to workers. Indeed, the gig economy may represent an ‘entrepreneurial renaissance’ for some but it simultaneously poses serious challenges to European judges and legislators apropos labour and social protection legislation. Responding to these challenges, the aim of my paper is to examine what a modern conception of EU ‘worker’ could entail. After giving a brief overview of the European social acquis in this area, I will illustrate its deficiencies and the reasons behind them. I will then provide an alternative theoretical account that would support a more holistic and inclusive theorization of the notion. More particularly, I will argue that the new European ‘worker’ definition should be extended to capture those who are in quasi-dependent marginal working arrangements. In numerous proposals for miscellaneous legislative initiatives the Commission has already started to display a more ‘social’ face, moving away from the hard ‘flexicurity agenda’ and the strong neo-liberal discourses that dominated its policies over the last three decades, putting any intervention in the free market on the defensive. It remains to be seen whether the social partners will agree on a more workerprotective definition or (whether) any such attempts will, once again, prove to be nothing more than a Sisyphean task.
MARC IBÁÑEZ DÍAZ
Marc Ibáñez Díaz is a La Caixa Fellow pursuing an MA in Global Affairs at the Jackson Institute. While at Yale Marc will study how to make global governance more citizen centric focusing on the European Union. Thus, he will focus his studies on global governance, European integration, nationalism and transnational democracy. His interest in citizen centric governance stems from his engagement in local politics since he was first elected to his town’s youth council at the age of eleven and his later role as a local activist. Marc graduated with extraordinary honors from the University of Barcelona with a BSc in Economics. His published senior thesis focused on the impact of Brexit on the UK financial sector. Marc went on exchange at the University of Pennsylvania (US) and Burgas Free University (Bulgaria). A member of multiple student groups he was elected a student representative to the university government. Before coming to Yale, Marc worked for three years in Sabadell Consulting, the internal strategic consultancy unit of the Sabadell Banking Group. As a consultant he designed and managed strategic projects and led the implementation of the General Data Protection Regulation in the group.
KELSEY JONES
Kelsey Jones is a master's student studying Environmental Resource Policy at George Washington University. She graduated with her B.A. in Political Science with minors in Anthropology and Sustainability from the University of Florida in 2016. Her graduate research looks at opportunities and challenges for renewable energy implementation in Arctic cities. She works in government affairs at the Nuclear Energy Institute.
Examining the Challenges and Opportunities for Renewable Energy in Arctic Cities Arctic cities are experiencing energy security issues due to frequent blackouts, outdated equipment, unstable grids, and overloaded transmission lines. High fuel costs and expensive utility bills add to the frustration. My research examines the challenge sand opportunities for renewable energy in three European Arctic cities. Yakutsk, Russia; Oulu, Finland; and Lulea, Sweden will serve as case studies. These cities use varying amounts of renewable energy. Building from an analysis of the existing literature and gaps in information on renewable energy in these cities, the goal of this research is to determine why certain cities have been more successful in implementing renewable energy and what barriers exist in those with a limited renewable energy presence. Existing challenges to renewable energy implementation in these cities include geography, climate, a lack of community and government coordination, depopulation, and an aversion to transitioning from fossil fuels. The assets and conditions that make renewable energy development possible include potential for hydropower, incentive programs, activism from local leaders, and coordination of implementation plans on the country and city level. The on-going transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy resources will reshape much of the Arctic economy.
CRISTIANA LUCCHETTI
Cristiana Lucchetti was born in Salerno, Italy and currently lives in Munich, Germany. She is a PhD student at LMU Munich, where she is working on her PhD project titled “Language and Culture in the Context of Migration. A Study on Russian-Speaking Communities in Israel and Germany”. Her main research interests are migration, multilingualism and integration processes, with particular focus on the post-Soviet context.
Integration, Self-Perception and Identity Construction Amongst Young Adults from the Former Soviet Union in Germany. A qualitative case study Throughout the 20th century, migration from the FSU has been directed mainly towards the US, Israel and Canada. It wasn’t until perestroika that Germany came to occupy a special position for post-Soviet migration, starting to accommodate mainly – but not exclusively – Jewish immigrants and Russia Germans (Russlanddeutsche). Immigration from the FSU confronted Germany with the necessity of adapting its migration policies to enhance newcomer integration. Today, migrants from the FSU constitute the largest immigrant group in Germany and are a popular research object in migration studies. However, the bulk of research has been traditionally focusing only on the two post-Soviet immigrant categories mentioned above, often applying ready-made administrative labels to the immigrant population rather than fully exploring its complexity. In this paper, I analyze cultural, linguistic and religious diversity amongst post-Soviet immigrants in Germany. Based on data from over 20 qualitative interviews with young adult immigrants from the FSU, I give a voice to the immigrants’ perceptions of the migration process as well as to their self-positioning in the receiving society. My case study shows that post-Soviet young adults tend to perceive and construe their identity as hybrid, thus challenging the expectations projected onto them by migration policies.
JESSLENE LEE
Jesslene Lee is a graduate student at the Department of Political Science at the National University of Singapore. Jesslene's research interests are in the subfields of International Relations and International Political Economy. Her research is motivated by the central question: how do rising powers affect global economic governance? She is particularly interested in examining how rising powers’ international economic engagement in the areas of development finance and trade supports or challenges the rules, norms, and institutions of existing global economic governance. Her current projects revolve around the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the Belt and Road Initiative.
NADIA KALISIAK
Nadia Kalisiak graduated from the University of Aberdeen in 2020 where she completed her degree in History, writing her dissertation under the supervision of Professor Robert Frost on nineteenth century national movements. Nadia is currently working towards completing her MPhil by thesis in comparative Slavonic literature at the University of Cambridge under the supervision of Dr Stanley Bill, focusing on nineteenth century Romantic literature, challenging the current postcolonial thought on the effects of Orientalism on national identities in Poland and Ukraine. Alongside her degree she is a researcher at the Cambridge Development Initiative and previously interned at the Polish Embassy in Seoul, South Korea. Her interests lie in international relations, literature, and post-colonialism.
DAN MOCANU
Dan Mocanu is a MPhil candidate at the Centre of Development Studies, University of Cambridge, where he studies as a Cambridge Trust Scholar. His research interests include European economic governance, industrial policy, global value chains, and the role of professional networks in transnational policymaking. Prior to Cambridge, he worked at Sciences Po Paris, where he researched the collaboration of the EIB Group with national development banks. He is a graduate of the College of Europe and holds a double-BA from the University of Groningen, Netherlands.
Venturing with the EU: Assessing the Role of EU Public Bodies in Fostering Post-Pandemic Venture Capital Markets The outbreak of COVID-19 has intensified the ongoing policy debates about the role of innovation-driven industrial policy in asserting the EU's technological sovereignty and spearheading the transition to sustainable growth. Given the importance of venture capital in the EU's strategy of industrial upgrading, its role has been reinforced by the EU's agenda of economic recovery. Although venture capital markets are often celebrated as the epitome of neoliberal market forces, over the last years EUlevel interventions have played a catalytic yet discreet role in fostering a U.S. modelled European VC ecosystem. My paper seeks to assess the political choices underpinning the recent EU-level initiatives to boost the development and integration of the European VC markets. It traces the contribution of the European Commission and of the European Investment Fund to the institutionalization of the VC market and unpacks the promises and limitations of recent regulatory and financial interventions in support of VC activity, such as the VentureEU fund and the first equity investments made through the European Innovation Council. I argue that despite the welcoming policy efforts to govern the economic recovery through venture capital marketaugmenting strategies, the EU's `entrepreneurial' turn suffers from inadequate matching between supply-side and demand-side policy interventions.
MASHA MONAKHOVA
Masha has always been interested in learning about different regions and cultures and gaining a better understanding on how the world works on a global scale. Through obtaining two Bachelor's degrees in International Economic Relations and International Law from the Peoples' Friendship University of Russia, she attained a solid knowledge of processes and major forces that shape the international landscape. She increased her expertise on different countries and specific regional policies when completing a Master's degree in Geography at the University of Northern Iowa focusing on sustainable development. Continuing on the pursuit of knowledge Masha took up a position as an intern at the UNDP in New York City to prove her knowledge and gain more experience. Choosing the Arctic as her main study area was natural for her as it takes on a new geopolitical and economic importance related to climate change and its effect on people, ecosystems, and economies. Currently, she is pursuing a PhD program in Environmental Social Science with Arizona State University where she continues working on critical policy challenges around climate change in the Arctic region.
Festivals as a Sustainable Development Tool: Case Study of Teriberka, Russia Northern Regions face rapid global change, but this is not limited to climate change. Within the Russian Arctic, deindustrialization and the resulting lack of economic development opportunities plague large cities and small villages. Frequently shifting government priorities and lack of government capacity at the local level exacerbate this sustainable development challenge. Though recently, sustainable tourism has emerged as a development approach that brings social, economic, and environmental value to remote Arctic communities. This study examines the Teriberka Festival taking place in a small village of the same name in the Russian Arctic. By utilizing interviews with the primary and secondary festival stakeholders, this research aims to capture how the Teriberka Festival contributes to the village's sustainable development, including economic, social, and environmental dimensions. The festival aims to address all three dimensions, but the community's socio-political and historical context has resulted in the prioritization of economic development. Yet, the direct impact of the festival on Teriberka’s economic development has been minimal. Indirectly the increased tourism associated with the festival has drawn attention to the need for improved infrastructure, potentially leading to more significant impacts in the future.
YELYZAVETA MONASTYROVA
My name is Yelyzaveta Monastyrova, I am an International Relations graduate from Ukraine and presently a second-year student of the Erasmus Mundus International Master in South European Studies at the University of Glasgow, Autonomous University of Madrid and LUISS Guido Carli in Rome. My research interests include international development, state fragility, socioeconomic inequalities, and migration, and after completing the Master I aim to pursue an academic career.
Euroscepticism and COVID-19: Examining the Spanish Political Landscape in the Face of the Pandemic Euroscepticism – opposition to European integration – reflects the EU’s ever mounting demand for legitimation and intensifies at pivotal points of its history. In southern Member States, where the connection between integration and internal democratisation processes determined historically high loyalty to the EU, the latter’s image as a beacon of solidarity faded with the Eurozone crisis as the EU-imposed austerity policies limited perceived national sovereignty. With the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, early debates on avoiding a breakdown of the EMU resuscitated “North-South” cleavages from the times of the sovereign debt crisis. However, the pandemic has been assessed both as a chance for enhancing the sense of common destiny and a spectre of dissent should such efforts fail. This paper focuses on the possible impact of the pandemic on the evolution of Euroscepticism in Spain, examining the political situation and attitudes to the EU since the announcement of the state of emergency in March 2020. It claims that, while the crisis had aggravated contestation within the national political system and allowed the opposition to discredit the governmental coalition, the EU has so far continued to be a “point of reference” even for the most Eurosceptic (in the comparative Spanish landscape) political actors.
CARLA MONTIGNY
Carla Montigny is a Politics and Security postgraduate student at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies. She has a background in History and Politics, and her research has mostly focused on nationalism, nation-building and national identity. She has looked at these topics through the prism of language and gender, specifically in relations to the Western Balkans and Russia. Her undergraduate dissertation explored the link between language and nation-building efforts after the breakup of Yugoslavia, while her master’s dissertation studies the impact of changing gender roles on Russian national identity post-1991.
Civil Society, Democracy and Authoritarianism – Contrasting Past and Present Attitudes to Protests and Popular Movements in Eastern Europe and in the West Protests and marches have often been seen as an integral part of political culture throughout European and Western history. However, the government’s attitudes towards popular unrest vary depending on the context they take place in. In democratic regimes, protests are often seen as a way to achieve progress through the expression of the vox populi; in authoritarian regimes, however, they are perceived as detrimental to stability, and often dismissed or repressed as the voice of a loud minority. This essay will argue that the fundamental differences that existed between the East and the West during the Cold War in public and political attitudes towards civic unrest and civil society still remain, in most cases, to this day. There are indeed similarities between the effects and responses to the 1956 Hungarian Uprising and 1968 Prague Spring and the recent anti-government protests in Belarus. Similarly, the impact of the US Civil Rights Movements or France’s May 1968 strikes bear some resemblance with attitudes to the BLM Movement in the summer of 2020. Differing approaches to civil society and popular unrest have led to the creation of underground activism in more repressive states and more open, socially acceptable activism in more democratic states.
SENNI MUT-TRACY
Senni Mut-Tracy is currently a research assistant at the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives at the University of Helsinki. She has a background in world politics and is currently pursuing her master’s degree in European and Nordic studies. Prior to this, she has worked, among other places, as a visiting fellow at the Center for Transatlantic Relations at the Johns Hopkins University (SAIS) and as a researcher with EU-commissioned projects. Senni has co-authored an in-depth report on Discriminatory Laws Undermining Women’s Rights for the Human Rights Subcommittee of the European Parliament.
Missing on the Transatlantic Agenda – Gender Equality Little has been written about women and equality in transatlantic relations despite great scholarly interest in both issues of gender and transatlantic relations. Debates on transatlantic relations in policy circles and academia mainly concern the state of relations at a given time, newly elected office holders and their policy preferences. The few studies undertaken with a focus on women’s presence have already shown that women are not equally represented at the ambassadorial level across foreign services and in the transatlantic think tank community. The aim of this paper is to serve as an opening for examining how this arena keeps reproducing a narrow image of actors and substantive issues by giving exclusive attention to male-dominated spheres like intergovernmental relations and military issues. By taking a broader look at the transatlantic agenda, such as the recent declaration2 on reinvigorating relations, I will seek to problematize the lack of joint public commitments to gender equality even as the EU and US champion human rights as a transatlantic value and promote them as part of their foreign policies. I will also demonstrate how this problem persists in prominent literature on transatlantic relations, where the contributions and position of women have not been raised.
RYAN NABIL
Ryan Nabil is currently a Fox Fellow at the Institut d’Études Politiques de Paris (Sciences Po), where he researches Chinese diplomacy in Europe, British foreign policy, and cybersecurity-related issues. Ryan is a recent M.A. graduate from the Yale Jackson Institute, where he studied international relations, comparative law, and diplomacy. As part of the MacMillan Center’s graduate certificate in European studies, he wrote a master’s thesis on Europe-China relations and its implications for European security and foreign affairs. While at Yale, Ryan served as a teaching fellow for three courses, including China in the World and Power Shifts, and worked as a research assistant for Professor Odd Arne Westad. In addition to his academic work, he served as the managing editor for the Yale Journal of International Affairs. Ryan was also part of the Stanford Forum for American Chinese Exchange and the Stanford U.S.-Russia Forum, where he researched strategies to improve U.S.-Russian economic relations.
UK-EU Security Cooperation in a Changing World Order As Europe reels from the Covid-19 pandemic, the continent must grapple with growing security challenges. On one hand, Europe needs to counter growing Chinese and Russian ambitions on the continent. On the other hand, Europe faces challenges from an unstable Middle East and North Africa. Given the increasing challenges that Europe faces, cooperation between the United Kingdom and the European Union is crucial to ensuring European security. This paper identifies the mechanisms through which Britain, the EU, and EU members pursue security cooperation and then makes four recommendations to improve UK-EU security cooperation. First, the UK should identify high-priority Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), make custom arrangements with the EU, and seek to maximize Britain’s influence in the development and implementation of selected projects. Second, because Britain can help shape non-EU European initiatives such as the French-led European Intervention Initiative (EI2), Britain should seek to play an active role in those initiatives. Third, Britain should strengthen bilateral security cooperation with France, Germany, as well as Baltic and Nordic countries through initiatives like the Northern Group and the Joint Expeditionary Force. Finally, Britain should reaffirm its commitment to European security through NATO. By collaborating closely with the United States and European countries, Britain should seek to play a leading role in addressing European security challenges within the NATO framework.
CÉLESTE PAGNIELLO
Céleste Pagniello holds a Bachelor of Music degree from McGill University (2018) and a Master of Philosophy degree in music from the University of Cambridge (2020), where her research, supervised by Professor Marina Frolova-Walker, focused on Boris Asafyev and The Fountain of Bakhchisarai ballet. She has spent time studying in Saint Petersburg, Russia, and Minsk, Belarus, and is currently undertaking a second Master of Philosophy degree at the University of Cambridge, in comparative literature and Slavonic studies, under the guidance of Dr. Rory Finnin. Her dissertation focuses on Soviet Belarusian literature and national identity. Her research interests include everything Tchaikovsky, Russian and Soviet ballet, socialist art, and the relationship between literature and music.
American Insurrection and Belarusian Resistance: A Dangerous Comparison In the aftermath of the storming of the United States Capitol by far-right insurrectionists on January 6th, 2021, a concerning trend in online reactions emerged, comparing the events in America to those in distant Belarus. Since August 2020, Belarusians have been peacefully protesting the surely falsified results of the country’s sixth presidential election that saw long-time president Alexander Lukashenko declare himself victor despite overwhelming support for his opponent, Svetlana Tsikhanovskaya. While surface-level comparisons of the two countries’ uprisings might seem appropriate, with citizens objecting to what they believe was a stolen election, a fundamental difference remains: evidence of election fraud is abundant in Belarus, but negligible in the United States.This paper will discuss the misconceptions that have lead to the perceived alignment of these movements, focusing on the extreme reactions provoked by Lukashenko and former US President Donald Trump. It will examine the various perils of democracy in both its leading champion and in a country that never fully embraced it, and why this comparison between the United States and Belarus is ultimately a dangerous one, threatening to delegitimize months of protests in Belarus, as the United States attempts to move past one of its darkest days.
FERNANDO A. REMACHE VINUEZA
Fernando Remache - Vinueza is currently a postgraduate student of the Erasmus Mundus international masters EUROSUD - South European Studies at the University of Glasgow. He holds a bachelor degree in History issued by Complutense University of Madrid. His research interests are identities and nationalism in Southern and Eastern Europe.
The Official Narrative of National Identity and the Emergence of Silenced Narratives: The Case of Lithuania The construction of national identity is defined by assigning certain characteristics to the nation in construct to other human communities who are considered as the “other”. In particular, this project analyzes the emergence of a binary identity in the Republic of Lithuania based on essentialist difference. This process is developed by a process of nationalization of the past in other to adapt historical situations to the present. The main goal is to reinforce the idea of Lithuania as a central European nation in contrast to its eastern neighbors (Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine) assigning relational values to different nationalities to establish their identities. Furthermore, there are certain actors such as Lithuanian Poles who are alienated from the mainstream discourse but they have emerged from silence to challenge to official narrative in the country in the first decade of the 21th century. These forgotten or alienated elements are also analyzed in the project. In consequence, there are 2 central questions in this research: What factors explain how the emergence of alternative narratives of the identity has emerged in Lithuania since the 1990s? Are the forgotten alternatives related to ethnic minorities effectively challenging the official narrative on national identity?
GABRIEL ROSENMAN
Gabriel Rosenman is a Ph.D student in Political Science at École Normale Supérieure (ENS) and École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS) in Paris. Resuming studies after 10 years as a railroad worker and union organizer, his research focuses on the use of strike funds in the French workers' movement. His field inquiry includes participant observation of strikes, exploitation of union archives and analysis of financial data, thus combining ethnographical, historical and statistical perspectives.
The Rise of French Strike Funds : Financial Solidarity and the Mass Strike of December 2019 In december 2019, France was shaken by a mass strike. Public transports were paralyzed for weeks, triggering a massive display of financial solidarity towards the strikers : hundreds of on-line strike funds sprouted, raising 5 millions euros worth of donations. While strike funds are a common element of the American unions' "repertoire of contention" (Tilly, 1984), they are extremely rare in France : the history of the French workers' movement is one of mass strikes but weak and divided unions, and the CGT (the main union in French history) has always opposed the idea of a wealthy union providing services for its members. Made possible by the rise of the internet and social media, these new funds constitute a tactical answer to the way management handled industrial conflicts since the last economic crisis by putting "the labour repertoire under pressure" (Vandaele, 2016). But did these funds facilitate the strike's expansion towards new sectors, or did they favor a form of delegation towards the sectors already on strike ("strike by proxy") ? Based on ethnographic observations, statistical analysis and interviews, this communication will try to clarify the rationales and tactical dilemmas of each of the three roles at play (strikers, donors, organizers).
ABIGAIL SKALKA
Abigail received her bachelor's degree in government, magna cum laude, from Cornell University in 2020. Her honors thesis was a quantitative analysis investigating a link between personal religiosity and support for right-wing populism, focusing mainly on Poland in a comparative perspective. She is now pursuing a master's in the regional studies of Eastern Europe at Harvard University, writing her thesis on the effect of clerical abuse scandals on the political power of the Polish Church.
Consent of the Governed: Changing Abortion Politics in Europe’s Catholic Strongholds The past decade has represented an inflection point in reproductive politics in two of Europe’s most Catholic-dominated nations––Poland and Ireland––and led to distinctly different outcomes in each. Whereas Ireland expanded the right to seek an abortion in a national referendum in 2015, already-limited abortion access in Poland has been chipped away even further by a ruling from the Constitutional Tribunal, Poland’s equivalent to the Supreme Court. The majority of Poles opposed the change and made this clear by pouring into the streets when the measure was attempted through legislative means in 2016, eventually prompting politicians to withdraw the bill from consideration and look for an alternative route; in 2020, they found that route in the judiciary. The difference between Poland and Ireland in this realm is not that abortion is significantly less popular in the former than the latter, but that the Irish government used direct democracy to determine the laws on abortion while Poland’s ruling party flouted the obvious will of the people to cut abortion access through the actions of unelected judges. This paper will lay out the issue, cite survey data, and examine the political mechanisms actors used to achieve their aims in order to analyze the overall democratic function of each country.
PEDRO SCHILLING DE CARVALHO
Pedro is a PhD Candidate at the Faculty of Law of the University of Cambridge, where he is a Richard Tee Scholar at Sidney Sussex College. He is also a Doctoral Exchange Student at Harvard Law School. Pedro holds an LLM from the University of Cambridge and an LLB from the University of São Paulo. His PhD thesis examines how international financial regulation has been affected by the current aversion to multilateralism, focusing on developments in the EU and UK. His research aims to understand how domestic and regional regulatory frameworks can be used to overcome these issues, facilitating coordination and development. During his studies, he was awarded a grant from the São Paulo Research Foundation, a Chevening Scholarship, and a Cambridge International Scholarship. Currently, he is a research assistant at the Cambridge Centre for Alternative Finance, and a Rapporteur to the Oxford International Organizations Project. In the past, Pedro has served as an an expert witness for the Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union of the UK House of Commons. Pedro also has experience as a practicing attorney in Arbitration, was Chief of Staff to the Chief Justice of the Commercial Law Chamber of the São Paulo State Supreme Court, and Secretary General of Brazil’s largest legal aid NGO.
Leading Through Expertise? The Role of the EU in International Finance Governance after Brexit International standard-setting bodies (ISSBs) appeared as one of the central responses to the demand for coordination in international finance that resulted from the intensification of crossborder activities. However, their short-comings and changes in the political context – the USA’s hostility towards multilateralism, Brexit, and the growing influence of some emerging economies such as China – point to transformations in how global financial regulation is produced. Therefore, it is necessary to understand domestic and regional frameworks that might lead to the creation of rival standards and allow for coordination and cooperation in an environment marked by increasing fragmentation and multipolarity, complementing what has traditionally been performed by international organisations. The EU provides a blueprint for such a new variant of global governance in the form of its equivalence frameworks. Early findings suggest that it was able both to (a) nudge other countries to adopt regulation that is similar to the EU, thus legitimising it as a source of best practices in finance and (b) accommodate divergence with other influential players such as the US, enabling cooperation without standardisation. The paper tries to understand how equivalence clauses served as policy export mechanisms and tools for deference.
ANIKET SANGWAN
Aniket Sangwan is a graduate student at the University of Cambridge in the Department of Land Economy. His current research is based on the political economy of British urban finance. Aniket did his undergraduate studies at the University of Wisconsin Madison where he majored in Economics and Geography.
TAMAR TODRIA
Tamar Todria is a PhD Candidate in European Studies. Working on the European Union Migration Policy and it's challenges in Southern European Countries. Tamar has published an article in European Scientific Journal will the following title: " Preserving Indigenous Culture or Spreading Multiculturalism Across Europe" . Tamar holds a MA degree in European Studies and BA degree in International Relations. Tamar was a beneficiary of Erasmus + grant twice, Jean Monnet MEDiterranean border crises and European External Action EUMedEA Crash Course. Tamar is actively participating in international workshops and conferences and is actively involved in Jean Monnet Projects. Tamar has 9 years of working experience in the field of education. In 2012-2017 years she has worked at the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia at International Relations and Programs Department and during 2017-2019 years she has worked in LEPL of the Ministry of Education and Science of Georgia, International Education Center at the Academic Programs and International projects Division. Tamar is an experienced judge in debates, she is an international adjudicator at international debate tournaments. Tamar is a member of IMISCOE PhD Network, currently is a member of Workshop Group". The following paper will examine how the method and attitudes towards teaching European Integration in Georgia has changed. Particular emphasize will be made to access transition period after the collapse of the Soviet Union and the changes it arose during the teaching process of European Integration. Teaching history, among them teaching European Studies in Georgia was particularly based on only memorizing facts. Gradually, series of reforms took place through decades – revising textbooks, modifying curricula, elaborating guidelines for teachers, offering teacher trainings. Time by time analyzing of the authentic sources, critical thinking, constructive argumentation arose. People started to think that only random facts were nothing, if not analyzed content wise. The development of European Studies, as a new academic field in Georgia, is not only a tool for a better understanding of the European Neighborhood and of EU matters. It is also a major contribution to the building of competencies which are crucial for efficient democracy and economy. In the following paper I will explore how despite many difficulties and challenges filed of European studies became popular and attractive for Georgian students. Special emphasize will be made on how several EU funded projects enabled Georgian Higher Academic Institutions to have adhered to the innovative teaching approaches, to convergence curricula and capacity building. In conclusion it will be mentioned that content as well as methods of teaching EU studies should be still modified as Georgia is still on it’s way of EU integration, but the results achieved after 2000s indicates the increase of interest towards the field of EU studies itself. I believe that this trend of attraction towards the filed should already be perceived as a positive approach.
