Since February 2022, the once prevalent feeling of Europe being a place of peace and security has given way to a sense of uncertainty and insecurity. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has also deeply impacted on how politicians, scholars and citizens think about war and peace in the wider region of Eastern Europe. Living through a critical juncture challenges researchers and policymakers to rethink linkages between the past and the present and consider their implications for the future. The question of what concepts and ideas can guide us in this process is a pressing one.

At this year’s ZOiS Annual Conference, we re-examine a selection of key social science concepts for their analytical leverage in a changed political context. How appropriate are concepts such as ‘development’, ‘mobility’, ‘temporality’, and ‘generation’ when it comes to analysing current trends? Do the assumptions on which they are based still hold? If not, how can the concepts be adjusted to take account of new circumstances? Switching our focus to a concept-driven discussion does not deflect from the pressing issues at stake, but rather attempts to frame and understand these developments in more depth and generate new research and policy questions in the process. The conference discussion about key concepts will draw on research in all five research clusters at ZOiS and bring it into dialogue with the perspectives of international guests.

We will supplement the conceptual discussion with hands-on practical sessions on the methodological challenges of empirical research in settings that are hard or impossible to access because of the war. We seek to contribute to an in-depth exchange on various qualitative and quantitative approaches to studying different parts of Eastern Europe.

The two-day conference starts on Thursday, 16 November at 2pm. On the first evening, there will be a PechaKucha event with young researchers.If you would like to attend the conference, please register by 10 November at the following link:

Registration 

Thursday, 16 November

2.00 pm Registration

2.45 pm

Welcome with ZOiS Director Gwendolyn Sasse

3.00 pm – 4.30 pm

Session 1: Youth and Generational Change

Simone Abendschön (JLU Gießen): Children, Youth and Politics - Current Research Perspectives

Hakob Matevosyan (ZOiS Berlin): Making Generations? Implications for Political Socialisation among Young Poles

Alena Zelenskaia (LMU München): "We Stay Out of Politics": War Memories and Political Neutrality within a Jehovah's Witnesses Family from Donbas

Chair: Félix Krawatzek (ZOiS Berlin)

4.30 pm – 4.45 pm Coffee Break

4.45 pm – 6.00 pm

Session 2: Simultaneity, Continuity or Disruption in Times of War?

Nadja Douglas (ZOiS): “Security is paramount“ – Changing perceptions of security in Poland and Lithuania

Ivaylo Dinev (ZOiS): The impact of the war on the party system in the Balkans: re-emergency of the West-East divide?

Benjamin Beuerle (CMB, Berlin) Climate Change Policies in Russia Before and After February 2022

Chair: Sabine v. Löwis (ZOiS)

6.00 pm – 6.30 pm Break

6.30 pm – 8.00 pm

PechaKucha Night

From 8pm Reception

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Friday, 17 November

9.00 am – 10.00 am Coffee and Juice

10.00 am – 11.15 am

Session 3: Paradigms and Practices of Development

Julian Bergmann (Institute of Development and Sustainability, IDOS) online:
Build back better? Strategies for Ukraine’s Reconstruction in Light of Debates on Post-Growth and Green-Growth

Valentin Krüsmann and Beril Ocaklı (ZOiS):
A Greening Belt and Road? China’s Role in Kazakhstan’s Energy Transition

Chair: Julia Langbein (ZOiS)

11.15 am – 11.30 am Coffee Break

11.30 am – 1.00 pm

Session 4: Displacement, Migration and Diaspora in Times of War

Viktoria Sereda (VUIAS, Prisma Ukraina): Migration Governance Responses of Türkiye toward Minorities Fleeing Ukraine after Russia’s Aggression

Félix Krawatzek (ZOiS): Who Are the New Russia Migrants? Insights into Their Political Attitudes and Behaviour

Tatiana Golova (ZOiS) and Liliia Sablina (CEU, Vienna): Old Migrants, New Diasporas? Pro-War Mobilization and Diasporisation of Russian-Speaking Migrants in Germany

Chair: Tsypylma Darieva (ZOiS)

1.00 pm – 2.00 pm Lunch

2.00 pm – 3.30 pm

Parallel Sessions: Methods

Session 1 (Library): Opening the Black Box War

Inputs by Tymofii Brik (Kyiv School of Economics, online), Nataliia Otrishchenko (Center for Urban History, Lviv) and Olga Onuch (University of Manchester)

Chair: Gwendolyn Sasse (ZOiS)

Session 2 (Conference Room 3): Data Challenges in Russia: How Can We Deal with the Black Box?

Inputs by Alexandra Prokopenko (ZOiS), Michael Rochlitz (University of Oxford) and Kevin Limonier (Université Paris-8/ Institut Français de Géopolitique)

Chair: Julia Langbein (ZOiS)

Session 3 (Conference Room 4, EG+): Research and Ethics in Conflict and War

Inputs by Tetiana Skrypchenko (UNET Fellow), Tatjana Thelen (Universität Wien) and Marie-Céline Schulte (NORC at the University of Chicago; Charité Universitätsmedizin Berlin; Heidelberg Institute of Global Health)

Chair: Nina Frieß (ZOiS)

4.00 pm – 5.30 pm

Final Session: Visualisations and Cartography: How Do They Fuse (Spatial) Discourses on War, Peace and In-between?

Mela Žuljević (Leibniz-Institute for Regional Geography, Leipzig): Flooded with Maps: Cartographic Legacies and Futures of Dayton Bosnia and Herzegovina

Maksym Rokmaniko (Center for Spatial Technologies, Kiyv/Berlin): The Center for Spatial Technologies' Study of Mariupol Drama Theater

Timothy Barney (University of Richmond): The Rhetorical Lives of War Maps

Chair: Kerstin Bischl (ZOiS)

5.30 pm

Closing

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Note: It is very important to us at ZOiS to show our support for Ukrainian researchers and students and to raise awareness of research about and from Ukraine. For the annual ZOiS conference, we adopted the following principles: ZOiS will welcome all students and scholars who oppose Russia’s war on Ukraine. Anyone supporting Russia’s war, or justifying it in any way, will not be welcome.