Category: Other countries

Seminar May 19: The Colonial Imaginary of ‘Europe’ in the EU’s Asymmetrical Response to the Russian and Israeli Aggressions: Ukraine as a Member of the ‘Family’ Whilst ‘Othering’ Palestine

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🎓Welcome to our online seminar!

Seminar May 19: The Colonial Imaginary of ‘Europe’ in the EU’s Asymmetrical Response to the Russian and Israeli Aggressions: Ukraine as a Member of the ‘Family’ Whilst ‘Othering’ Palestine

🎤Alvaro Oleart, Post-doctoral Researcher at the Université Libre de Belgique (ULB)
📅May 19, 15:15-17:00
🏢Zoom: https://lnkd.in/e8wPDsrm

Abstract: What is ‘Europe’? The response to this question is not straightforward, as ‘Europe’ is a floating signifier that is in constant renegotiation. In this article, we focus on the imaginary of ‘Europe’ that has been deployed in the most salient international crises of the last years that have heavily shaken European Union (EU) politics: the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the attack of Hamas on 7 October 2023, followed by the ensuing offensive of Israel on the Palestinian Gaza Strip. More concretely, we ask: what is the narrative of ‘Europe’ articulated by the European Commission President, Ursula von der Leyen, and the HRVP, Josep Borrell, in response to these events? We argue that, in the context of these two cases, two distinct imaginaries of ‘Europe’ have been mobilised based on differentiated conceptualisations of the relationship of ‘Europe’ to Ukraine and Palestine. Whereas Ukraine is conceived as part of the ‘European family’, there is a process of ‘othering’ Palestine. Our article exposes the racism and double standards of the EU in regard to the defence of international law and human rights, the exclusiveness of who belongs to ‘Europe’ and the continuity of the colonial thinking that permeates the narratives of EU leaders.

Seminar January 20 with Mane Tsaturyan: “Armenia’s Foreign Policy Options…”

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Mane Tsaturyan: “Armenia’s Foreign Policy Options Within China’s Belt and Road Initiative: A Small State Perspective” 

Place & Time

Date: 20 January, 15:15-17:00 

Place: NI:C0933 seminar room, 9th floor, Niagara, Nordenskiöldsgatan 1

Or Online: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68831376873, Meeting ID: 688 3137 6873

Bio

Mane Tsaturyan is an International Relations specialist currently working at the Delegation of the European Union to Armenia, where she prepares briefings, assessments, and detailed political reports on developments in Armenia and the wider region. She holds a Master’s degree in European Interdisciplinary Studies from the College of Europe in Natolin, where she was awarded the United Nations Award for the Best Thesis on “Europe, Multilateralism, and the UN.” She also holds a Master’s degree in World Politics from Yerevan State University, and is an alumna of the Diplomatic Academy of the MFA of Armenia. Her areas of expertise include EU foreign policy, multilateralism, the UN, the migration–foreign policy nexus, security, China, and Armenia.

Abstract

How does a small state like Armenia navigate one of the world’s largest infrastructure and economic projects, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI)? In this talk, I will present my research exploring Armenia’s foreign policy choices within the BRI framework, especially after the 2020 Nagorno-Karabakh War. Using small state theory, we will look at the unique challenges and opportunities Armenia faces in balancing security concerns with the desire for economic integration. I will highlight why, despite the BRI being over a decade old, Armenia remains largely outside its main corridors, and what this reveals about the delicate strategies small states use to engage with global mega-initiatives.

Welcome to RUCARR seminar 20th January!

Seminar November 18: The EU-Russia Competition, Multi-Modal Contestation and Governance in a Shared Sphere of Influence

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RUCARR Seminar with Bidzina Lebanidze, PhD, Senior Analyst at the Georgian Institute of Politics (GIP) and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute of Slavic Languages and Caucasus Studies at Friedrich Schiller University Jena

Time: November 18th, 15:15-17:00

Place: Seminar room, 9th floor, Niagara, or on Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68198560054

Abstract:

In an era of resurgent multipolar competition, a fundamental update to our understanding of the reemerging concept of Spheres of Influence (SOIs) is needed. This analysis introduces the “Multi-Modal Sphere of Influence” (MMSOI) as a new analytical framework, positing that contemporary great powers project influence not just via coercion, but through a dynamic interplay of five modalities: military, economic, institutional, normative, and digital. This framework is used to deconstruct the intractable EU-Russia conflict in their “shared neighborhood” by bridging macro-, meso-, and case-level findings. At the macro-level, the core of the conflict is defined by different modalities of competition; this is not a symmetrical power struggle, but a structural clash between incompatible toolkits: the EU’s dominant normative, institutional, and economic modalities colliding with Russia’s reliance on its coercive-military and energy-based toolkit. This overlapping, multi-modal contestation creates, at the meso-level, a paradoxical environment for “in-between” states, granting them new avenues for hedging and agency while simultaneously exposing them to acute risks of coercion and conflict. Finally, the analysis unpacks the EU’s paradoxical role as an “antithetical actor.” While normatively rejecting SOIs, the EU’s institutional and regulatory expansion functions as a powerful, sui generis SOI-building tool, making it an unintentional geopolitical player. This synthesized approach explains the EU-Russia competition not merely as a regional dispute, but as a microcosm of 21st-century multi-modal, multipolar contestation.

 

Seminar October 7: MAKING SENSE OF RUSSIAN STRATEGIC NARRATIVES – AFFECT AND RECEPTION AMONG YOUNG RUSSIAN SPEAKERS IN LATVIA

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RUCARR Seminar with Emma Rönngren, Örebro University

Time: October 7, 15.15-17.00 CET

Place: NI:C0319 (Niagara) or via Zoom: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/69615481801

Abstract:

Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, attention has increasingly focused on how Russian strategic narratives are projected and received. In this seminar, Dr. Emma Rönngren presents findings from her doctoral dissertation on how Russian-speaking youth in Latvia make sense of, negotiate, and sometimes resist such narratives, with particular attention to emotions, media, and identity.

Drawing on focus groups and interviews with 69 participants, the study shows how young people navigate a contested media landscape where narratives of history, freedom of speech and language circulate. Using Carolyn Michelle’s reception model, Rönngren demonstrates how participants interpret these narratives on both denotative and connotative levels of meaning. Affect emerges as a key factor, shaping whether narratives gain persuasive force or trigger critical distance.

By foregrounding youth perspectives, the study not only contributes to debates on narrative power, resistance, and the affective dimensions of media reception, but also challenges simplified views of Russian-speaking minorities as either loyal or disloyal. It highlights the complexity of everyday meaning-making and the implications this has for democratic and civil actors in the Baltic Sea region.

Bio:

Dr. Emma Rönngren is a media and communication scholar specializing in strategic narratives, affect and information influence in the Baltic Sea region. She is a senior lecturer at Örebro University, affiliated researcher at IRES, Uppsala University and serves as the Student and Early Career Representative for the ICA Public Diplomacy Interest Group. Her current work includes forthcoming articles and book chapters on narrative persuasion, civil society resilience, and the role of media in geopolitics.

 

Seminar with Sofya du Boulay, May 13th: Mythmaking, Mega-events, and Coercion: Autocratic Legitimation in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan

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Mythmaking, Mega-events, and Coercion: Autocratic Legitimation in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan
Dr. Sofya du Boulay

When? Tuesday 13th of May, 15:15-17:00
Where? Seminar room, 9th floor, Niagara or online: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/64306600653

Abstract:

What constitutes legitimate order in modern autocracies? This research argues that the persistence of autocratic domination evolves beyond simple mechanisms of repression but represents a dynamic process of nurturing public consent and imitating socioeconomic progress. It explores why and how the autocratic regimes in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are remarkably resilient, despite domestic policy failures, mass protests, and suffocating geopolitical alliances. Drawing on comparative political analysis, this study analyses the stabilisation mechanisms of autocratic self-justification through three complementary sources: discourses, spectacles, and repression. Input discourses serve as a coherent body of political arguments, normalising official narratives about the suitability of existing authority structures and state-building processes. To maintain power, modern autocracies need to adapt to global norms and spectacles. Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan host mega-events to increase their international recognition, exercising a balancing act between inherent political vulnerability and stability. Mega-events satisfy elite ambitions to reinvent and promote national identity under increased media exposure. Coercion prevents the opposition from rebelling against those in power, ensuring regime survival once discourses and spectacles are unavailable as alternative sources of legitimation. Through document analysis and sixty expert interviews collected in Baku, Astana, and Almaty this work traces the evolution of regime practices, actors, and events involved in formulating the right to rule in Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan between 1991 and 2022.

Speaker:

Dr. Sofya du Boulay is an authoritarian politics scholar with a special interest in Central Asia and Caucasus, she is currently a visiting fellow at the University of Sussex. Published on politics of succession, legitimation, post-Soviet legacy in Communist and Post-Communist-Studies and Problems of Post-Communism. She has worked for various international organizations including the Norwegian Helsinki Committee, the UN Population Fund, and the UN Economic Commission for Europe and is passionate about research community building: USTA Mentorship Program

 

Book launch with Isabell Burmester, Understanding EU and Russian Hegemony in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, March 11

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Understanding EU and Russian Hegemony in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus 

When? March 11st, 15:15-17:00

Where? Niagara, NI:A0311 or online: https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68505534320

What drives the European Union’s and Russia’s influence in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus? How do their strategies compare, and what does this tell us about the broader regional dynamics that ultimately culminated in Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine? The talk will present the main findings of the forthcoming book EU and Russian Hegemony in the ‘Shared Neighbourhood’: Between Coercion, Prescription, and Co-optation. It will explore how the EU and Russia exert power in their shared neighborhood, using the concept of hegemony to make sense of their competing approaches. By examining the mechanisms of coercion, prescription, and co-optation, this study provides a comparative analysis of how both actors have shaped the political and economic trajectories of Moldova and Armenia since the early 2000s. Bringing together insights from EU neighborhood policy, Russian foreign policy, and international relations scholarship, the book presents an innovative framework for understanding regional power struggles. By making EU and Russian strategies analytically comparable, it sheds light on how these interactions have evolved—and what they reveal about the ongoing shifts in regional order.

 

The book will be out open access in March: https://link.springer.com/book/9783031754876

Dr. Isabell Burmester is currently a post-doctoral researcher at the Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris.

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Journalist Johanna Melén presents her new book “Imperiehunger”

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Welcome to a presentation in Swedish at RUCARR by Johanna Melén, foreign correspondent at Sveriges Radio:

Johanna Melén besöker RUCARR vid Institutionen för Globala politiska studier för att berätta om sin bok “Imperiehunger : Putins storryska drömmar och ett nyvaknat motstånd”.

När: 10 september, 15-17
Var: Seminarierummet, vån 9, Niagara, eller Zoom, https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/68024609948

Det här är en bok om de självständiga länder som genom historien dominerats av Ryssland och som fortfarande drygt tre decennier sedan Sovjetunionens fall kämpar för att ses som något annat än före detta sovjetrepubliker.

Vladimir Putin har byggt sitt politiska varumärke kring att återskapa bilden av Ryssland som en stormakt, därtill med en tusenårig historia. Länderna som tidigare levde under rysk hegemoni har behövt förhålla sig till det. När det storskaliga anfallskriget mot Ukraina inleddes väcktes en rädsla bland flera postsovjetiska länder för att stå näst på tur. Men också en växande insikt om vikten av att värna sin autonomi, sitt språk, sin nationella kultur som något oavhängigt den ryska.

I Imperiehunger rör sig Johanna Melén mellan Armenien, Azerbajdzjan, Belarus, Georgien, Kazakstan, Moldavien, Tadzjikistan och Ukraina. Hon beskriver utvecklingen i respektive land och hur relationen till Ryssland har förändrats sedan februari 2022. Boken ger också en historisk tillbakablick över både kommuniståren och den tidiga historien för att ge en djupare förståelse kring rysk imperialism då – och nu.

Johanna Melén är Sveriges Radios korrespondent i Östeuropa. Hon debuterade 2021 med Mina ryska vänner: en berättelse om Putins Ryssland.

Seminar May 21, 15:15-17:00: The inefficiency of EU leverage in Serbia during the Russia-Ukraine war

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The inefficiency of EU leverage in Serbia during the Russia-Ukraine war, Branislav Radeljić

When: May 21, 15.15-17:00 CET
Where: Zoom link https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/69865873540

The war in Ukraine has exposed a rift between Serbia and the Brussels administration. Serbia has been accused of aligning itself with Russia as opposed to the strictly pro-Ukrainian EU. In this talk, Prof. Radeljić will look at the nature of EU–Serbia relations, with a particular focus on (a) the relevance of EU norms and values as policy tools, (b) the foreign policy of Serbia under the Progressivists and the regime of Aleksandar Vučić, and (c) the rising influence of Russia and China in the Western Balkan region, which has been undermining the EU’s push for democratization and Europeanization.

Branislav Radeljić is Professor of International Relations in the Department of Government and Society, United Arab Emirates University. In addition, he serves as Visiting Professor of European Politics at Nebrija University. His scholarly interests focus on European and Middle Eastern political and socioeconomic developments. 

Seminar May 14 – The Georgian-Byzantine literary interaction in the 11th century

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The Georgian-Byzantine literary interaction in the eleventh century

— Christian Høgel, Professor of Greek and Latin, Lund University

Welcome to this joint seminar with RUCARR and CEMES-network “Thinking the European Academy of Letters”!

When: May 14, 15.15-16.30 CET
Where: Zoom link https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/67115473647

After the Georgian nobleman Ioane Tornike supported the young Byzantine emperor Basil II against pretenders to the Byzantine throne, Georgians became much closer connected to Byzantine politics and to Byzantine text culture. The establishment of the Iviron monastery in mount Athos turned out a most productive translation center but also became an aristocratic setting of Georgians within the Byzantine world. Our extant text material witnesses both this Byzantine-Georgian literary exchanges and gives us valuable information on different text cultures along the Silk Road.

Bio

Christian Høgel is professor of Greek and Latin at Lund University since 2023. He has published widely on Byzantine hagiography and on translations – on the early Greek translation of the Qur’an and on translations from Georgian. He is co-director of the Retracing Connections research programme (Riksbankens Jubileumsfond).

Seminar May 7 “Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State” with Dr Hamed-Troyansky

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RUCARR seminar with Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky, Ass. Prof. of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara:

Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State

 

When: May 7, 17.00-18.15 CET

Where: zoom https://mau-se.zoom.us/j/62352627321

Between the 1850s and World War I, about one million Muslims from the Russian Empire’s North Caucasus region sought refuge in the Ottoman Empire. In his new book, Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State, Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky examines how Circassian, Chechen, Dagestani, and other refugees transformed the late Ottoman Empire and how the Ottoman government managed Muslim refugee resettlement. Empire of Refugees argues that, in response to Muslim migrations from Russia, the Ottoman government created a refugee regime, which predated refugee systems set up by the League of Nations and the United Nations. The book also revises our understanding of how Russia used migration policies to govern the Caucasus and its Muslim populations.

Bio

Dr. Vladimir Hamed-Troyansky is a historian of global migration and forced displacement and Assistant Professor of Global Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara. His research examines Muslim refugee migration and its role in shaping the modern world. He is the author of Empire of Refugees: North Caucasian Muslims and the Late Ottoman State (Stanford University Press, 2024). His articles appeared in Past & Present, Comparative Studies in Society and History, International Journal of Middle East Studies, Slavic Review, and Kritika. He received a Ph.D. in History from Stanford University and served as a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University.