Past Events

	Title	Date	Type	Speakers
	To be in Contact with the World	Thu, 05.05.2022	Social and Networking Events	Charles Taylor Misha Glenny Rajeev Bhargava, Hartmut Rosa, Elisabeth von Thadden	To be in Contact with the World Thu, 05.05.2022 Speakers: Charles Taylor Misha Glenny Rajeev Bhargava, Hartmut Rosa, Elisabeth von Thadden Series: Social and Networking Events Charles Taylor, one of the outstanding philosophers of our age, turned 90 on November 5, 2021. Taylor has been closely associated with the Institute for Human Sciences for more than three decades. His life and work have always been inseparably bound up with one another. He is a scholar, a committed citizen, and a public intellectual. Many researchers owe him an immense debt of gratitude being the intellectual inspiration behind their own work and, most importantly, for his generosity and charming esprit. Rajeev Bhargava and Hartmut Rosa, two of Taylor’s long time intellectual companions, honored his work and personality. Read more
To be in Contact with the World Thu, 05.05.2022 Speakers: Charles Taylor Misha Glenny Rajeev Bhargava, Hartmut Rosa, Elisabeth von Thadden Series: Social and Networking Events Charles Taylor, one of the outstanding philosophers of our age, turned 90 on November 5, 2021. Taylor has been closely associated with the Institute for Human Sciences for more than three decades. His life and work have always been inseparably bound up with one another. He is a scholar, a committed citizen, and a public intellectual. Many researchers owe him an immense debt of gratitude being the intellectual inspiration behind their own work and, most importantly, for his generosity and charming esprit. Rajeev Bhargava and Hartmut Rosa, two of Taylor’s long time intellectual companions, honored his work and personality. Read more
	Typology and Principles of Regional Integration in Comparative Perspective	Mon, 02.05.2022	Seminars and Colloquia	Clemena Antonova Mario Apostolov	Typology and Principles of Regional Integration in Comparative Perspective Mon, 02.05.2022 Speakers: Clemena Antonova Mario Apostolov Series: Seminars and Colloquia The end of the ideological Cold War divisions created a cheery sentiment of renewed unity in Europe and the world, with chances for development for all. As the stability of the bipolar structure vanished, strengthening regional integration entities seemed to become the bricks for the new organizational edifice of world society. At first, this vision was substantiated by countries coming together in various regional groupings, led by pragmatic interest, overcoming age-old perceptions of neighbours typically fighting each other. Several types of regions formed: a top-down integration as in the European Union and its institutions; a bottom-up expansion of regional supply chains as in East Asia; the more limited approach of free trade agreements as in USMCA; or simply regions without regionalism. This talk will look for common principles underpinning the various efforts at regional integration, such as the joint pursuit of peace and economic development, assistance to laggards, etc., building on existing theories (Neofunctionalism, New Regionalism and Comparative Regionalism), trying to go beyond. Read more
Typology and Principles of Regional Integration in Comparative Perspective Mon, 02.05.2022 Speakers: Clemena Antonova Mario Apostolov Series: Seminars and Colloquia The end of the ideological Cold War divisions created a cheery sentiment of renewed unity in Europe and the world, with chances for development for all. As the stability of the bipolar structure vanished, strengthening regional integration entities seemed to become the bricks for the new organizational edifice of world society. At first, this vision was substantiated by countries coming together in various regional groupings, led by pragmatic interest, overcoming age-old perceptions of neighbours typically fighting each other. Several types of regions formed: a top-down integration as in the European Union and its institutions; a bottom-up expansion of regional supply chains as in East Asia; the more limited approach of free trade agreements as in USMCA; or simply regions without regionalism. This talk will look for common principles underpinning the various efforts at regional integration, such as the joint pursuit of peace and economic development, assistance to laggards, etc., building on existing theories (Neofunctionalism, New Regionalism and Comparative Regionalism), trying to go beyond. Read more
	“Self-Organization” as Ukraine’s New Culture of Civic Engagement	Thu, 28.04.2022	Panels and Discussions	Kateryna Iakovlenko Katherine YoungerEmily Channell-Justice	“Self-Organization” as Ukraine’s New Culture of Civic Engagement Thu, 28.04.2022 Speakers: Kateryna Iakovlenko Katherine YoungerEmily Channell-Justice Series: Panels and Discussions A key element of Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests of 2013-2014 was “self-organization,” the idea that if someone has the ability to do something, and that thing needs to be done, the person should simply do it - a clear shift from a Soviet-era mentality of reliance on state institutions to meet people’s needs. This presentation explores the development of self-organization during Euromaidan, its role in later protest movements, and its contribution to reconceptualizing the state. Read more
“Self-Organization” as Ukraine’s New Culture of Civic Engagement Thu, 28.04.2022 Speakers: Kateryna Iakovlenko Katherine YoungerEmily Channell-Justice Series: Panels and Discussions A key element of Ukraine’s Euromaidan protests of 2013-2014 was “self-organization,” the idea that if someone has the ability to do something, and that thing needs to be done, the person should simply do it - a clear shift from a Soviet-era mentality of reliance on state institutions to meet people’s needs. This presentation explores the development of self-organization during Euromaidan, its role in later protest movements, and its contribution to reconceptualizing the state. Read more
	Patient Earth: The Rise and Fall of Globalization	Tue, 26.04.2022	Lecture	Ivan Vejvoda Jeremy Adelman	Patient Earth: The Rise and Fall of Globalization Tue, 26.04.2022 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Jeremy Adelman Series: Lecture This lecture was a short history of globalization, examining its origins in the 1970s to its legacies. With the world decomposing into pieces, it is tempting to look back on the last forty years as a short-lived convergence in a long history of fragmentation and failed efforts to assemble a cooperative whole out of the world’s competitive parts. The lecture asked: can a global history of the present reveal a different unity or even new integrative concepts among the splinters of globalization? From what Charles Taylor once called “deep diversity” can we find the coordinates for shared ways of belonging to one planet, beyond the prevailing narratives of dread and existential threat? Read more
Patient Earth: The Rise and Fall of Globalization Tue, 26.04.2022 Speakers: Ivan Vejvoda Jeremy Adelman Series: Lecture This lecture was a short history of globalization, examining its origins in the 1970s to its legacies. With the world decomposing into pieces, it is tempting to look back on the last forty years as a short-lived convergence in a long history of fragmentation and failed efforts to assemble a cooperative whole out of the world’s competitive parts. The lecture asked: can a global history of the present reveal a different unity or even new integrative concepts among the splinters of globalization? From what Charles Taylor once called “deep diversity” can we find the coordinates for shared ways of belonging to one planet, beyond the prevailing narratives of dread and existential threat? Read more
	Transforming Care: Connecting Normative and Political Problems in the Analysis of Care	Mon, 25.04.2022	Seminars and Colloquia	Rossella Ciccia	Transforming Care: Connecting Normative and Political Problems in the Analysis of Care Mon, 25.04.2022 Speakers: Rossella Ciccia Series: Seminars and Colloquia The covid-19 crisis has exposed the limitations of current approaches to care, but political reforms struggle to gain momentum and fundamental changes to care systems are hampered by long-term structural conditions, disinvestment and political fragmentation. This lecture argues that to transform the social organization of care we need to rethink care from a multiple inequality perspective that links the needs and rights of those providing and receiving care. Read more
Transforming Care: Connecting Normative and Political Problems in the Analysis of Care Mon, 25.04.2022 Speakers: Rossella Ciccia Series: Seminars and Colloquia The covid-19 crisis has exposed the limitations of current approaches to care, but political reforms struggle to gain momentum and fundamental changes to care systems are hampered by long-term structural conditions, disinvestment and political fragmentation. This lecture argues that to transform the social organization of care we need to rethink care from a multiple inequality perspective that links the needs and rights of those providing and receiving care. Read more
	As the West Goes to War, Crafting Peace Today	Mon, 25.04.2022	Panels and Discussions	Paula Banerjee Ranabir SamaddarMarcello Musto, Sandro Mezzadra	As the West Goes to War, Crafting Peace Today Mon, 25.04.2022 Speakers: Paula Banerjee Ranabir SamaddarMarcello Musto, Sandro Mezzadra Series: Panels and Discussions As Europe, broadly the West, goes to war and the media grimly predicts a third world war, this panel discussion asks pertinent questions about the meaning of this war for the working people of the world and in particular the rest of the world. The 'third' world or the 'global south' has historically been crucial in the construction of Europe as the dominant and civilized other. What are the geopolitical implications of the present war in Europe for the rest of the world? How does this war hinder the prospect of global peace and people’s security? What is the impact of the war on food security, energy security, and in general security of nations? Is there any necessity for the weaker and smaller nations and the working people to take side in the war? Must they support military alliances? Is this war, which includes weaponised policies of economic sanctions and discriminatory policies of protection of refugees, essential to save “democracy”? What, in fact, will be the definition of peace in this context? How can we articulate the politics of peace in this time? Read more
As the West Goes to War, Crafting Peace Today Mon, 25.04.2022 Speakers: Paula Banerjee Ranabir SamaddarMarcello Musto, Sandro Mezzadra Series: Panels and Discussions As Europe, broadly the West, goes to war and the media grimly predicts a third world war, this panel discussion asks pertinent questions about the meaning of this war for the working people of the world and in particular the rest of the world. The 'third' world or the 'global south' has historically been crucial in the construction of Europe as the dominant and civilized other. What are the geopolitical implications of the present war in Europe for the rest of the world? How does this war hinder the prospect of global peace and people’s security? What is the impact of the war on food security, energy security, and in general security of nations? Is there any necessity for the weaker and smaller nations and the working people to take side in the war? Must they support military alliances? Is this war, which includes weaponised policies of economic sanctions and discriminatory policies of protection of refugees, essential to save “democracy”? What, in fact, will be the definition of peace in this context? How can we articulate the politics of peace in this time? Read more
	Vienna meets Prague	Thu, 21.04.2022	Festivals		Vienna meets Prague Thu, 21.04.2022 Speakers: Series: Festivals Vom 21.-24. April 2022 wird im Rahmen von Vienna meets Prague wieder tschechische Kunst und Kultur in Wien präsentiert. Unter dem Motto Praha//cross over bietet das Kulturfestival in Kooperation mit der Botschaft der Tschechischen Republik, dem Tschechischen Zentrum und dem Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen ein Programm des grenzübergreifenden und interdisziplinären Dialogs. Hauptspielstätte ist das Architekturzentrum Wien im Museumsquartier. Read more
Vienna meets Prague Thu, 21.04.2022 Speakers: Series: Festivals Vom 21.-24. April 2022 wird im Rahmen von Vienna meets Prague wieder tschechische Kunst und Kultur in Wien präsentiert. Unter dem Motto Praha//cross over bietet das Kulturfestival in Kooperation mit der Botschaft der Tschechischen Republik, dem Tschechischen Zentrum und dem Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen ein Programm des grenzübergreifenden und interdisziplinären Dialogs. Hauptspielstätte ist das Architekturzentrum Wien im Museumsquartier. Read more
	Reporting on the War in Ukraine	Wed, 20.04.2022	Panels and Discussions	Katherine Younger	Reporting on the War in Ukraine Wed, 20.04.2022 Speakers: Katherine Younger Series: Panels and Discussions Journalist Nataliya Gumenyuk talked about how Ukrainian society is responding to the Russian invasion and the role narrative journalism can play in shaping broader understanding of the war. Read more

	The “Migrant” in the Middle: How the Struggle for Decolonization and the Struggle against Fascism Are Linked	Wed, 20.04.2022	Seminars and Colloquia	Ayşe ÇağlarGregory Feldman	The “Migrant” in the Middle: How the Struggle for Decolonization and the Struggle against Fascism Are Linked Wed, 20.04.2022 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarGregory Feldman Series: Seminars and Colloquia The “migrant” – as the figure outside the polity – stands at the intersection of two global struggles: that of decolonization and that against fascism. An emancipatory politics for all involved will remain elusive until 1) the link between these two struggles is clarified; and 2) those structurally aligned with the category of “white citizen” realize that they, too, are impoverished by the dehumanization of the Other. This paper firstly explains how fascism is baked into modern sovereign power beginning with Hobbes’s Leviathan and fully expressed in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. By fascism, I mean the inclination of an atomized and insecure national-cum-racial majority to form homogenous mass movements that regard the state with suspicion and that targets all others as existential threats. The paper secondly argues that this sovereign arrangement also diminishes the “white citizen” in the majority because that person must sacrifice their own perspective to find safety in conformity, but at the expense of becoming monstrous versions of themselves as they support a politics of oppression. Dismantling fascism’s enabling logic corresponds to decolonization as both struggles necessarily question the basis of modern politics: the atomized individual. The paper, then, draws on Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin who, each in their own way, outline an alternative (and more realistic) political subject that is both inherently related to others and utterly unique in its own worldly perspective. However fleetingly, this subject is poised for an alternative sovereign action premised upon the fact of human plurality rather than myth of national-cum-racial homogeneity. Read more
The “Migrant” in the Middle: How the Struggle for Decolonization and the Struggle against Fascism Are Linked Wed, 20.04.2022 Speakers: Ayşe ÇağlarGregory Feldman Series: Seminars and Colloquia The “migrant” – as the figure outside the polity – stands at the intersection of two global struggles: that of decolonization and that against fascism. An emancipatory politics for all involved will remain elusive until 1) the link between these two struggles is clarified; and 2) those structurally aligned with the category of “white citizen” realize that they, too, are impoverished by the dehumanization of the Other. This paper firstly explains how fascism is baked into modern sovereign power beginning with Hobbes’s Leviathan and fully expressed in Tocqueville’s Democracy in America. By fascism, I mean the inclination of an atomized and insecure national-cum-racial majority to form homogenous mass movements that regard the state with suspicion and that targets all others as existential threats. The paper secondly argues that this sovereign arrangement also diminishes the “white citizen” in the majority because that person must sacrifice their own perspective to find safety in conformity, but at the expense of becoming monstrous versions of themselves as they support a politics of oppression. Dismantling fascism’s enabling logic corresponds to decolonization as both struggles necessarily question the basis of modern politics: the atomized individual. The paper, then, draws on Frantz Fanon and James Baldwin who, each in their own way, outline an alternative (and more realistic) political subject that is both inherently related to others and utterly unique in its own worldly perspective. However fleetingly, this subject is poised for an alternative sovereign action premised upon the fact of human plurality rather than myth of national-cum-racial homogeneity. Read more
	Idealism and Capitalism: Two Sides of the Beginnings of Private Higher Education in the Czech Republic	Tue, 19.04.2022	Seminars and Colloquia	Ludger Hagedorn Milada Polišenská	Idealism and Capitalism: Two Sides of the Beginnings of Private Higher Education in the Czech Republic Tue, 19.04.2022 Speakers: Ludger Hagedorn Milada Polišenská Series: Seminars and Colloquia The lecture will focus on the origins and early years of private colleges in the Czech Republic. Polišenská’s earlier research on this topic will be supplemented by the findings in the framework of her Fellowship investigating the impact of underground universities on the post-communist transformation of tertiary education in Czechia. The private higher education in Czechia, preconditioned by the collapse of Communism, was part of the post-communist transformation and was impacted by the dynamic international changes in higher education in the late 1990s and by the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU in 2004. Read more
Idealism and Capitalism: Two Sides of the Beginnings of Private Higher Education in the Czech Republic Tue, 19.04.2022 Speakers: Ludger Hagedorn Milada Polišenská Series: Seminars and Colloquia The lecture will focus on the origins and early years of private colleges in the Czech Republic. Polišenská’s earlier research on this topic will be supplemented by the findings in the framework of her Fellowship investigating the impact of underground universities on the post-communist transformation of tertiary education in Czechia. The private higher education in Czechia, preconditioned by the collapse of Communism, was part of the post-communist transformation and was impacted by the dynamic international changes in higher education in the late 1990s and by the accession of the Czech Republic to the EU in 2004. Read more