A community in progress? The dynamics of European identification in times of global crises

YUFE Academy Lecture hosted by Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
Date and Time: 3 November 2020, 10:00 – 11:30 CET / 5 November 2020, 10:00 – 11:30 CET
Registration Deadline: 27 October 2020
Available seats: 250
Lecturer: Professor Aleksandra Sojka
Description: Since the beginning of the multiple crises which have challenged the European Union (EU) in the last decade, public and academic attention to the political effects of social identities has intensified. Though the question of the identification processes underlying European integration is by no means new, as the various economic and political challenges to the Union unfolded, the role played by national and European loyalties has become central to the understanding of current EU politics. In most European countries, Eurosceptic parties managed to trigger a public debate on identity-related issues, and, by capitalizing on nationalist sentiments, brought about developments which are causing grave problems for the future of the continent. As a consequence, there is an urgent need to re-visit assumptions on the relationship between European integration and processes of political identification. The aim of this session is to examine the question of European identity from different theoretical and empirical standpoints and critically examine the role played by identities in current EU politics. We will discuss the effects of diversity and mobility on processes of identification and identity politics in a globalized era. The discussions in the session will provide an opportunity for a reflection on the theoretical implications of recent crises for the emergence of a common European identification and to re-evaluate its theories from an interdisciplinary point of view.

The Mies Van Der Rohe Architectural Awards, Best in class in Europe

YUFE Academy Lecture hosted by the University of Cyprus
Date and Time: 6 November 2020, 10:00 – 11:30 CET
Registration Deadline: 27 October 2020
Available seats:
Lecturer: Associate Professor Andreas Savvides & Associate Professor Nadia Charalambous
Description: The presentation aims to present to the audience a European integration proposal pertaining to the field of architecture that since its inception almost twenty years has become a European milestone in recognizing architectural excellence common to Europe.

According to the foundation, the idea for a Prize that would recognize and commend excellence in European architecture was proposed to the European Parliament by MP Xavier Rubert de Ventós. On April 28 1987 —just under a year after the reconstruction of the Pavilion was completed— an agreement was signed between European Commissioner Carlo Ripa di Meana and Barcelona Mayor Pasqual Maragall to launch the Mies van der Rohe Award of the European Communities, with the first biennial edition being held in 1988 as the Mies van der Rohe Award for European Architecture.

In 2000 the Fundació Mies van der Rohe submitted the model of the Mies van der Rohe Award —with the addition of the Emerging Architect Special Mention that recognizes the work of young professionals starting out on their careers— in response to the call for proposals by the European Commission for the ‘European Union Prize for Contemporary Architecture’. Upon acceptance of the Fundació’s proposal, in 2001, the Mies van der Rohe Award became the official architecture prize of the European Union.

Consequently, just like in other aspects of culture, so it is that with this convention as well we get to celebrate excellence in a common yet very diverse architectural heritage.

From Dissonant Heritage to Dark Tourism in Southeastern Europe

YUFE Academy Lecture hosted by the University of Rijeka
Date and Time: 11 November 2020, 16:30 – 17:30 CET
Registration Deadline: 30 October 2020
Available seats: 300
Lecturer: Professor Vjeran Pavlaković
Description: After the fall of communism in Eastern Europe in the 1990s, monuments and other memory sites established by the post-WW2 regimes were destroyed, defaced, removed, and reappropriated, especially in the former Yugoslavia and throughout Southeastern Europe. While some damaged memorials have been restored, others were set aside in special memory parks. Parallel to the struggles over the dissonant heritage of the socialist era was a new monument boom, dedicated not only to the recent conflicts but also to revisionist interpretations of the Second World War or communist repression. This increasingly crowded memoryscape continues to be a subject of political and cultural debates across the region, affecting both domestic politics as well as bilateral relations. This lecture reflects on some of the most recent monument controversies in the region, as well as the growing trend of cultural heritage and dark tourism initiatives based on these memorial sites.

Flipped UEF

YUFE Academy Lecture hosted by the University of Eastern Finland
Date and Time: 13 November 2020, 12:00 – 13:30 CET
Registration Deadline: 30 October 2020
Available seats: 250
Lecturer: Assistant Professor Erkko Sointu
Description: Systematic research-based development work for teaching and learning is done since 2015 at University of Eastern Finland (UEF) by UEF interdisciplinary learning environments development team called Team Ameba. Flipped classroom was selected as the main approach for this work aiming to change the university learning culture towards more active, learning-centred Flipped Learning.
Leader of Team Ameba Erkko Sointu (PhD, Education) presents starting points for the research-based development work with Flipped approach, dimensions that developer, teachers and research should consider alongside with some resent research results and practical examples. Erkko works as an assistant professor (tenure track) of learning and novel teaching methods development at UEF School of Educational Sciences and Psychology/Special Education. His research interest lie in flipped classroom/learning, strength-based approaches, and most recently research on learning analytics.

Sustainable and Resilient Development in Europe after the Covid Pandemics

YUFE Academy Lecture hosted by Tor Vergata University of Rome
Date and Time: 18 November 2020, 11:00 – 13:00 CET
Registration Deadline: 6 November 2020
Available seats: 250
Lecturer: Professor Leonardo Becchetti
Description: The global visible shock of the COVID-19 pandemic and the global (less visible) threat of climate change are demonstrating that the old economic paradigm is obsolete and wrong. Exactly as when a car driver does not consider that brakes are ineffective beyond a certain speed the old paradigm is wrong as it has for long time incorrectly neglected one constraint (environmental sustainability) in its maximisation approach.
We explain how the post COVID-19 recovery has to be resilient, generative and sustainable in order to take into account this lesson, how the economic paradigm is changing and going beyond individual, corporate and policy reductionist views and what are the most urgent policy steps to be taken to foster the change we need to create richer of sense purpose-first societies.

A More Perfect Union? On the Economics of European Identity

YUFE Academy Lecture hosted by Tor Vergata University of Rome
Date and Time: 20 November 2020, 11:00 – 13:00 CET
Registration Deadline: 6 November 2020
Available seats: 250
Lecturer: Professor Gustavo Piga
Description: In his First Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1861 in Washington D.C. US President Abraham Lincoln recalled that “…in 1787 one of the declared objects for ordaining and establishing the US Constitution, was to form a more perfect Union. But if [the] destruction of the Union, by one, or by a part only, of the States, be lawfully possible, the Union is less perfect than before the Constitution, having lost the vital element of perpetuity.” The word perfect was mentioned once more in that speech referring to a potential new Union of seceding states: “Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new union, as to produce harmony only, and prevent renewed secession?”

In this perspective, unions of heterogeneous states are seen as dynamic and inherently unstable political arrangements, while also nudged by constitutions and treaties. Lincoln seemed further to imply that homogeneity and a common identity reduce instability and facilitate perpetuity of such arrangements.

But doesn’t a Federation require to leave certain items of decision to each (different) single members? Isn’t this also recognizing the possibility that different identities may survive within a «perfect» Union? Is there an optimal path toward such a perfect Union, minimizing the dangers that may put in harm’s way the Union itself?

We argue that constitutions and legal treaties are necessary but not sufficient instruments for successful Unions, i.e. perpetual Unions of heterogeneous States not threatened by secessions. In fact, the economics of those treaties and the way these frame the economic policy of the Union imply that we might not be able to meet the sufficiency criteria of a good constitution for a more perfect Union. We use historical lessons from the evolution of fiscal federalism in the United States to draw analogies and point at differences for the future potential evolution of the European Union.

Promoting European Union Values in International Relations

YUFE Academy Lecture hosted by Nicolaus Copernicus University
Date and Time: 25 November 2020, 10:00 – 11:30 CET
Registration Deadline: 13 November 2020
Available seats: 250
Lecturer: Professor Justyna Maliszewska-Nienartowicz & Dr Michał Piechowicz
Description: The aims of the lecture are twofold. On the one hand, to define values and to characterise EU values, on the other to present the concrete activities which show how the EU promotes its values in international relations.
Accordingly, the lecture will have three parts. It will start with the discussion on the definition of values. The discussion will be lead by both lecturers – dr Michał Piechowicz and prof. Justyna Maliszewska-Nienartowicz. First, we will discuss this question together, giving the general ideas how we understand the term ‘value’, then we will ask students about their ideas concerning values. The example questions are the following:
• What does the word „value” mean to you?
• Do you think that values are important in all spheres of life, including political and social one?
• Is there any hierarchy of values where some of them are more important than others? Try to give some examples.
• What categories of values do you know?
After the discussion, the lecturers will recapitulate it and give the final definition of values and examples of different categories of values.
The next problem which will be discussed is connected with the list of EU values provided for in the art. 2 of the Treaty on the EU. Again we will present this issue together and then we will ask questions e.g. if the students think that this list is a sufficient one, how it differs from art. 21 of the Treaty on the EU which regulates the principles of external actions of the EU etc. In other way we “will go” from a more general issue of values to more concrete issue of principles binding the EU in international relations. We will also try to show how values and principles are interconnected in the frames of the EU external actions.
The last part of the lecture will concentrate on the examples of the EU activities which confirm that this organisation is based on certain values and principles and tries to promote them in international relations. We will start with the presentation of the EU regional strategies – enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe, stabilisation strategy in the Western Balkans, and the Euro-Mediterranean Partnership – in order to trace the development of the EU’s norms and instruments in support of democracy and human rights. We will also refer to the EU Neighbourhood Policy. Next, there will be a discussion where the students will have the opportunity to evaluate the presented EU activities.

Led By Donkeys: Englishness, Nostalgia, and Crisis

YUFE Academy Lecture hosted by the University of Essex
Date and Time: 27 November 2020, 17:00 – 19:00 CET
Registration Deadline: 13 November 2020
Available seats: 200
Lecturer: Professor Lucy Noakes
Description: Anyone looking at England in the spring of 2020 might have wondered why, in the midst of a pandemic, which has currently infected and killed more people in Britain than in any other part of Europe, the country seemed to be obsessed by a conflict some 70 years ago. From ex-UKIP MEPs tweeting that Luftwaffe bombs didn’t keep the British out of their pubs, and so no virus was going to do so, to conga lines in streets celebrating the 75th anniversary of VE Day in the midst of a national lockdown, the war was everywhere.

In this paper I want to trace some of the reasons for this, looking at the creation of an enduring cultural memory of the Second World War as the country’s ‘finest hour’ during the war itself and since. While almost all European countries have cultural memories of the Second World War that are shaped by the needs and demands of the present, this memory of the war has fed into a sense of ‘English exceptionalism’ that has, arguably, led to a series of crises in British, and especially English, public life. I’ll think in particular about the shift from a memory of ‘the People’s War’ to a memory of ‘Churchill’s War’ and how this might have enabled the war’s co-option by the right-wing populism that has been so evident in Britain over the past decade.

The idea of Europe – and its Consequences

YUFE Academy Lecture hosted by Maastricht University
Date and Time: 1 December 2020, 11:00 – 12:30 CET
Registration Deadline: 20 November 2020
Available seats: 300
Lecturer: Assistant Professor Ferenc Laczo
Description: The lecture addresses three large historical questions that shape our contemporary conceptions of Europe. First, the lecturer will talk about the puzzling geography of a continent that is not quite a continent. Whereas the borders of Europe are rather clear in the West, the South and the North, Europe being part of the Eurasian landmass, it needs to continuously delimit itself vis-à-vis the East to remain distinct. The lecturer shall explore some of the dilemmas and tensions that has resulted from this and how they inform policies today. Second, the lecturer will address the religious connotations of ‘Europe’ and ‘Europeanness’? Is Europe perhaps little more than a secularized version of the realm of Christendom and, if so, what are the implications of that? How has Europe accommodated religious difference in its modern history and how does it do so today? Third, the lecturer will inquire more specifically into the concepts of Europe that have been employed in the post-war project of integration, focusing on the tension between a singular concept and the differentiated space the European project has in fact created. Ultimately, the lecturer shall ask how historical legacies – the concept of a continent, the idea of specific religious realm, visions of unity – continue to shape us and with what consequences as we navigate Europe’s place and role in an increasingly globalized world in the 21st century.

Colonialism and Europe: the heritage of Enlightenment

YUFE Academy Lecture hosted by the University of Antwerp
Date and Time: 4 December 2020, 10:00 – 12:00 CET
Registration Deadline: 20 November 2020
Available seats: 250
Lecturer: Professor Heleen Touquet & Professor Katrien Schaubroeck
Description: This lecture will explore two interrelated themes connected to the European Union and the memory of colonialism.

1. The history of the Eurafrican project and its links with European integration
2. Colonialism and the enlightenment

The memory of colonialism is one of the blind spots in the EU’s memory framework. In the last decade demands to deal with the colonial and imperial past (for instance through the Black Lives Matter Movement) have been raised in various member states. The EU itself and the project of EU integration however are also closely linked to colonialism through the Eurafrican idea. In the first part of the lecture, we discuss the Eurafrican project, its continuation and its implications for dealing with the past in Europe. In the second part of the lecture, we will analyse the complicated relation between Enlightenment and colonialism. While some 18th century philosophers spoke out against the barbaric treatment of people in colonies, many postcolonial thinkers argue that enlightened rationalism helped to justify European imperialism. We will approach this uncomfortable tension from different angles. One angle will be offered by the Dutch social and cultural anthropologist Gloria Wekker who explains, in her book White Innocence: Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race, that it is precisely the belief that one is guided by reason that can blind one for the irrational and immoral patterns of thinking and behaving that perpetuate both on an individual and a collective level. Furthermore we will argue that especially canon-based disciplines, like philosophy, should be very attentive of the heritage they import in contemporary research and teaching.