On 10 April, IWM fellows and guests gathered in the Institute's library for this year's Spring Fellows' Conference. A staple of intellectual life at the Institute since its early days, the biannual conference offers an opportunity for early-career visiting researchers from a wide range of disciplines to present their work and exchange ideas in a collegial atmosphere. IWM visiting and permanent fellows, alumni, and scholars from Viennese institutions act as commentators and discussants. This year's conference explored topics ranging from inclusive AI to discourses on solidarity and European economic integration, organized into four thematic panels.
Program
Panel 1: Renegotiating Economic and Epistemic Inequalities: A Global Perspective
9:10 - 10:55
Matteo Nebbiai: The EU in a Weaponized World: A Club-Based Blueprint for a Post-WTO World
Commentator: Ivan Krastev, IWM Albert Hirschman Permanent Fellow
Vincent F. MO: Political Concepts and Conceptual Effects in Chinese IR
Commentator: Thomas Eder, OIIP Austrian Institute for International Affairs
Mary Onguko: Human-Centered AI: Inclusive AI Innovations that strategically empower African Women through Co-Design
Commentator: Richard Cockett, IWM Visiting Fellow
Panel 2: Mediating and Performing Identities: Towards a Decolonization of Art, Literature, and Media
11:15 - 13:00
Katia Denysova: Vernacular Debts in the Modernist Art of Alexandra Exter and Kultur Lige Artists
Commentator: Katalin Cseh-Varga, University of Vienna
Aleksandra Tobiasz: (Central) European Self in the Mirrors of the West and the East (Alma M. Karlin)
Commentator: Hanna Yankuta, IWM Visiting Fellow
Georgi Georgiev: Parallel Monitoring: Intellectual Approaches to Radio and Digital Disinformation
Commentator: Taras Fedirko, IWM Senior Research Fellow
Panel 3: Liberalism vs. Illiberalism: Between Divergence and Convergence
14:30 - 15:40
Wojciech Engelking: Common-Good Constitutionalism as Responsive Law in the New American Anti-Liberalism
Commentator: Maciej Kisilowski, Central European University Vienna, IWM Non-resident Fellow
Emilia Sieczka: Between Floating and Empty Signifiers in the Post-Transition Discourse on ‘Solidarity’: Towards a Genealogy of Populism in Poland
Commentator: Vito Laterza, IWM Visiting Fellow
Panel 4: Contesting Hegemonic Narrative-Making: Critical Histories
15:40 - 17:25
Maksym Snihyr: Unwanted yet Documented: The Legal Status of Refugees from Soviet Ukraine in 1930s Romania
Commentator: Ayşe Çağlar, IWM Permanent Fellow
Edward Knudsen: Tariffs, Technology, and Transfer Unions: The Historical Origins of European Economic (Dis)Unity
Commentator: Johannes Sebastian Leitner, LM Political Risk and Strategy Advisory, Vienna
Tomasz Wiśniewski: Postsecular Criticism of History.
Commentator: Ludger Hagedorn, IWM Permanent Fellow
