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Overview of Past Events

Amsterdam Centre for European Studies - ACES

On this page you can find information about the past events and find direct links to our YouTube channel for recordings of online events.

Lecture series

  • European Politics in Transition

    In the European Politics Series we discussed developments in European politics with scholars, practitioners, journalists, and commentators from the Netherlands and abroad. We zoomed in on the significance of key events, such as election outcomes, governments assuming office, and leadership changes, as well as that of long term processes, such as democratic backsliding and increasing polarisation across European countries as well as at the EU level. The series is a cooperation between ACES and Spui25, organised by Sarah de Lange.

    The US presidential elections: implications for Europe

    The impact of the outcome of the US presidential elections extends far beyond North America. With scholars and journalists we discuss what the election results might mean for politics in European countries. Will the results strengthen ongoing developments, such as increasing polarization, mobilization around racial equality, or the spread of conspiracy theories? And will the impact be experienced more directly in some European countries than others?

    Speakers: Caspar Thomas, Penny Sheets, Sara Polak, Laila Frank, Cas Mudde and Lisa Peters
    Date: 5 November 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Corona and the populist radical right: end of an era?

    The ongoing corona pandemic is reshaping our societies and our democracies. One of the most significant political developments in recent years has been the rise of populism. What effect will the pandemic have on populist radical right parties in Europe? Will it boost their electoral success, or will it on the contrary cause their demise? Populism experts from across Europe discuss the impact of the pandemic on the populist radical right.

    Speaker: Léonie de Jonge, Daphne Halikiopoulou, Matthijs Rooduijn, Catarina Froio and Sarah de Lange
    Date: 30 November 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Work, Family, Fatherland: Social Populism in Central and Eastern Europe

    The new east-west divide in Europe is not just about authoritarian regimes defying the rule of law. In this European Politics In Transition lecture Mitchell Orenstein and Bojan Bugarič show that populist social appeals centered around ‘work, family, and fatherland’ are central to understanding the success of authoritarian government in Central and Eastern Europe.

    Speaker: Mitchell Orenstein, Bojan Bugarič and Jonathan Zeitlin (moderator)
    Date: 10 February 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    The German Elections: Continuity or Change?

    After 16 years of stability under Merkel, will German voters opt for continuity or change? With scholars from different disciplines we discuss what the elections on the 26th of September are likely to bring, and what the results might mean for the future of Europe.

    Speaker(s): Hanco Jürgens, Hannah Muehlenhoff, Julia Schulte-Cloos, Tarik Abou-Chadi  
    Date: 15 September 2021 

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

  • Decolonising Europe

    What is Europe’s place in the world in 2020? Both societal and academic debates have brought up this question. Increasingly, scholars have turned to decolonial studies to rethink Europe’s place and to answer this important question. This online series provides an opportunity for engaging with scholars and academic debates in decolonialism, and to reflect and learn more about a variety of approaches and topics. During the online seminars we will address questions such as: What does ‘decolonising Europe’ mean? What new research avenues do decolonial approaches bring? How can we work with decolonial methodologies and theories in our daily research activities?

    Eurocentrism

    The online series 'Decolonising Europe' starts with a session exploring what 'Eurocentrism' means. How did the term emerge and why was it necessary? In this session the origins and implications of ‘Eurocentric’ views on international politics will be discussed, and possible avenues of thinking differently and what it entails to do research from non-European perspective will be explored. 

    Speaker: Gurminder Bhambra, Darshan Vigneswaran 
    Date: 18 June 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Who gets to speak? The exclusion of voices in academia and society

    This is the second session of the ACES online lecture series Decolonising Europe in International Politics. In this session the focus will be on the erasure and silencing of voices that point to the traces of colonialism and racism in academia. How can we understand institutional racism that exists in academia? And how does it inform our knowledge production? And what are the broader societal consequences of racism, and particularly anti-black sentiments in science?

    Speaker: Robbie Shilliam, Nivi Manchanda
    Date: 29 June 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Rethinking European-Ottoman Encounters

    This is the third session of the ACES online lecture series Decolonising Europe in International Politics. In this third session the history of Euro-Ottoman relations will be revisited to understand and analyse perceptions, attitudes and interactions in topics of Islam, democracy and capitalism.

    Speaker: Cemal Burak Tansel, Senem Aydın-Düzgit
    Date: 2 July 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Europe and Colonial ‘Lives’ in North Africa

    This is the fourth session of the ACES online lecture series Decolonising Europe in International Politics. The fourth session is the special book edition of the online series. We speak with Sara Salem about her new book “Anticolonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony”. The book analyses the afterlives of Egypt’s moment of decolonisation through an imagined conversation between Gramsci and Fanon around questions of anticolonialism, resistance, revolution and liberty.

    Speaker: Sara Salem
    Date: 9 July 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Decolonising the curriculum

    This is the fifth and last session before the summer break of the ACES online lecture series Decolonising Europe in International Politics. In this final session the discussion will focus on the practical applications of decolonial theories. The panel will discuss how to decolonize the curriculum in practice, and how to apply a decolonial approach to our teaching and researching.

    Speaker: Rosalba Icaza, Michael Onyebuchi Eze
    Date: 16 July 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Decolonising Indonesia - Extraction, property and race

    This is the sixth session of the lecture series 'Decolonising Europe''. With a particular focus on Indonesia, the speakers adopt a historical colonial perspective on issues of economic expropriation and ecological destruction. They will trace the colonial ties of current economic conditions and practices in Indonesia, along with the country’s position in the world market. They highlight how past interventions by the Dutch East India Company and the Dutch colonial state have set the conditions for extraction, land grabbing and cultivation of indigenous knowledge, whose effects are still shaping realities on the ground. 

    Speaker: Lisa Tilley, Tamara Soukotta
    Date: 5 October 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Decolonising the museum & art: Collections, colonialism & curators

    During this panel conversation we will delve into the question of how to decolonize the museum and art spaces. Museums and displays of art are important spaces where narratives of histories and peoples are constructed and maintained. There has been a continuous debate in several European countries on which artefacts are included in exhibitions, why certain histories on colonialism and slavery are made invisible and how museums can renegotiate their position in contemporary societies. In this panel we reflect on how museums can or should deal with their own colonial pasts or attachments, and how they attempt to design exhibitions in a way that challenges or disrupts a Eurocentric view on the world. 

    Speaker: Quinsy Gario, Chiara de Cesari, Wayne Modest
    Date: 21 October 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Provincialising Europe

    In this session, we host Prof. Dipesh Chakrabarty - a leading scholar in postcolonial thought and subaltern studies. Prof. Chakrabarty’s book Provincializing Europe has been ground-breaking in the social sciences regarding Eurocentric accounts of the origins of modernity. This week’s session focuses on Prof. Chakrabarty’s ongoing work on the phenomenon of global warming. We discuss how certain narratives of human history, which center Europe in scientific and popular discussions, have conditioned the way global warming, its causes and solutions have been understood, framed and debated.  

    Speaker: Dipesh Chakrabarty
    Date: 26 October 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Sovereignty and political authority

    This session invites us to rethink the concept of sovereignty and Europe. While the notion of sovereignty has come up multiple times in previous sessions, we are now joined by two speakers who will discuss in-depth why and how the study of sovereignty has largely been Euro-centric in the mainstream International Relations literature.

    Speaker: Ayse Zarakol, Xavier Mathieu
    Date: 9 November 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Decolonising Migration

    In the 10th session of Decolonising Europe, Polly Pallister Wilkins will interview Nadine El-Enany. They will discuss her book: (B)ordering Britain: Law, Race and Empire.

    Speaker: Nadine El-Enany
    Date: 18 November 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Decolonising humanitarianism

    The session is organised by the guest moderator by Polly Pallister-Wilkins. Together with Farhana Sultana, Associate Professor of Geography, Syracuse University, and Tobias Denskus, Senior Lecturer Malmö University, she will discuss the topic of decolonising humanitarianism.

    Speaker: Farhana Sultana, Tobias Denskus
    Date: 7 December 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Decolonising the Non-Colonisers?

    In this session the gaze is towards Eastern Europe. Where is Eastern Europe in the history of global colonialism? This session explores why Eastern Europe has been largely absent from mainstream histories of global colonialism and studies of postcolonialism and decolonialism.

    Speaker: Zoltán Ginelli, James Mark
    Date: 18 February 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Decolonising Queerness

    We will discuss how to adopt a framework towards gender and sexuality that does not centre white and European experiences or scholars. Rather this panel engages with debates about gender and sexuality in relation to colonial histories of Europe, the intersectionality of race, class, gender and sexuality and current debates on heteronormativity.

    Speaker: Sarah Bracke, Sandeep Bakshi
    Date: 18 March 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Recentering “Eastern” Europe in Decoloniality

    In this session, we continue our conversation on how decoloniality is related to the Eastern part of Europe. Our speakers will explore the theoretical and political filiations between dependency theory, world-systems analysis and decoloniality with a view to recentering the European East in decolonial thought, while decolonizing the category of “Eastern Europe” that the joint processes of coloniality and inter-imperiality bequeathed to the social sciences and to political-economic discourse.

    Speaker: Manuela Boatcă, Ovidiu Țichindeleanu
    Date: 8 April 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Decolonising Hellas

    This is the 15th session of the Decolonising Europe Lecture Series. In this session we turn our gaze towards Greece. What is the relationship between the Greek nation-state and Europe’s colonial genealogies? How has Greece co-constituted the European colonial project? What does it mean to decolonise Hellas?

    Speaker: Nikolas Kosmatopoulos, Despina Lalaki
    Date: 17 June 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

  • Bridging Race and Migration Studies

    What are the points of contestation between race and migration studies in 21st century Europe? Why have these two fields developed parallel to, but not always in conversation with, each other? While the study of race- and ethnicity in Europe has historically been concerned with imperial pasts, postcolonial presents and constructions of race across the continent, migration studies has predominantly tackled issues of migrant settlement, integration and global mobilities focusing on questions of labour markets and economics, national identity and social cohesion, and state sovereignty. Over the past decades, a shift has occurred in Europe where scholars within critical race, migration, post/colonial and mobility studies increasingly have treated race and ethnicity as constitutive of migration processes.

    Fatima El-Tayeb

    Fatima El-Tayeb is Professor of Literature and Ethnic Studies and associate director of critical gender studies at the University of California, San Diego, where her innovative scholarship deals with issues of migration, sexuality, ethnicity, queerness and race in Europe. 

    Speaker: Fatima El-Tayeb
    Date: 27 January 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Studying Race and Migration Together: a Conversation between Amade M’charek & Tobias Hübinette

    What are the obstacles to bridging race- and migration studies in Europe? In this second session, we invite Amade M’Charek (UvA, the Netherlands) and Tobias Hübinette (Karlstad University, Sweden) to tackle this question.

    Speaker: Amade M’charek, Tobias Hübinette
    Date: 18 February 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Race, Queerness & Transfeminism in European Migration Studies

    Who is a migrant in Europe? The third session of the series invites Alyosxa Tudor (SOAS) to discuss their work on migratism, racism and transfeminism in European migration studies.

    Speaker: Alyosxa Tudor
    Date: 29 March 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Barak Kalir

    In this fourth lecture, dr. Barak Kalir (UvA) will unpack how the administration of illegalized migration works as a crucial frontier for managing racism in society. The audience is warmly invited to join the discussion in a short Q&A session after the lecture.

    Speaker: Barak Kalir
    Date: 28 April 2021

    Betty de Hart

    How should we theorize race in the study of family migration in Europe? How have the history of colonialism and racism impacted the development of European family migration law, including the Netherlands? Betty de Hart (VU) will address these issues based on her recent academic work on the regulation of mixed intimacies in Europe.

    Speaker: Betty de Hart
    Date: 10 June 2021

  • Gender and Sexuality in European (Geo)Politics

    The challenges facing the European Union today are multiple, with the Covid-19 pandemic both heightening existing forms of inequality and exclusion, as well as serving to radicalize political debates. This virtual seminar series discussed how these contemporary challenges can be more fully understood by engaging with feminist and intersectional scholarship, drawing attention to the key role of gender and sexuality in shaping political debates and new and old forms of discrimination.

    Risk analysis as political

    In this talk, Saskia Stachowitsch explores how risk analysis in European border security functions as a sense-making security practice that is deeply political. With a focus on Frontex, she investigates how gender and race matter in constituting the "riskiness" of migrants as well as the notion of "migration crisis". As a contribution to emerging debates on race and racism in security studies, she argues for an intersectional approach that reveals how understandings of crisis are linked to the reproduction of gendered and racialized stereotypes, identities and inequalities.

    Speaker: Saskia Stachowitsch
    Date: 27 October 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    In Focus: Slipping off or turning the tide? 

    This is the second event of the Gender and Sexuality Lecture Series with a special focus on 'A Feminist EU in the World?'. During this event there will be a special focus on the special issue in Political Studies Review 18(3) edited by Hanna L. Muehlenhoff (UvA), Anna van der Vleuten (Radboud University Nijmegen) and Natalie Welfens (UvA). 

    Speaker: Toni Haastrup, Gülay Çağlar, Anna van der Vleuten
    Date: 24 November 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Pushback against the Istanbul Convention

    In this webinar we discuss why and how the Istanbul Convention became such a central site of contestation over gender equality, who are the actors that oppose the convention and what strategies and arguments do they use? 

    Speakers: Dubravka Simonovic, Feride Acar, Andrea Kriszan, Conny Roggeband
    Date: 10 December 2020

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Feminist Framing of Europeanisation: Gender Equality Policies in Turkey and the EU

    How can we rethink the theory and practice of Europeanisation from a feminist perspective? This event discusses the recently published edited collection ‘Feminist Framing of Europeanisation’ (with Palgrave Macmillan, 2021) which explores the Europeanisation of gender policies and addresses theoretical challenges surrounding the EU’s impact on domestic politics.

    Speakers: Rahime Süleymanoğlu-Kürüm, F. Melis Cin, Beste İşleyen
    Date: 14 January

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Gender and Sexuality Studies Under Attack in Central-Eastern Europe

    What are the historical, political, social and cultural sources of the attacks on Gender and Sexuality Studies in Central-Eastern Europe? Are they local or rather fueled by transnational conservative movements? What are possible strategies and solidarities (local and global) to counteract them?

    Speakers: Tomasz Basiuk, Agnieszka Kościańska & Hadley Z. Renkin 
    Date: 27 January 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    In Focus: A Feminist EU in the World? A feminist foreign policy for the European Union?

    This is the second event in the In Focus Series: A Feminist EU in the World? During this event Hannah Neumann, MEP, Roberta Guerrina and Michelle Pace will explore what a Feminist Foreign Policy for the EU could or should look like, reflect upon how current developments in EU foreign and security policy speak to the idea of a Feminist Foreign Policy and discuss its potentials and pitfalls.

    Speakers: Hannah Neuman, Roberta Guerrina and Michelle Pace
    Date: 2 February 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    A feminist EU in the World? A Feminist Foreign Policy for a Climate-Just Future?

    This is the third event in the In Focus Series: “A Feminist EU in the World?” In this event we zoom in on the EU’s policies on Climate Justice and climate change from an (intersectional) feminist perspective. 

    Speakers: Annica Kronsell, Andrew Telford and Margaretha Wewerinke-Singh
    Date: 1 March 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    In Focus: The EU and a Feminist Global Trade

    The third event in the In Focus series ‘A Feminist EU in the World?’ focuses on the role of the European Union as a global trade actor. 

    Speakers: Susan Harris Rimmer, Silke Trommer and Maya Taselaar
    Date: 12 April 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Building feminist peace: what way forward for the EU?

    Some EU member states have declared to pursue a Feminist Foreign Policy. Such a Feminist Foreign Policy calls for disarmament, reversing militarisation, and prioritising human security. While in fact, the EU’s latest Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security is more ambitious than previous proposals, EU leaders are also moving towards a more military approach when it comes to security and development objectives. 

    Speakers: Laura Davis, Gina Heathcote, Helen Kezi-Nwoha
    Date: 18 May 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Neoliberalism's fuel to anti-feminism

    In this seminar part of the Gender & Sexuality in European (Geo)politics, Akwugo Emejulu (University of Warwick), Emanuela Lombardo (Complutense University Madrid) and Elzbieta Korolczuk (Södertörn University) will discuss how neoliberal policies and politics erode the opportunity structure for feminist movements and class- and race-inclusive activism.

    Speakers: Akwugo Emejulu, Emanuela Lombardo, Elzbieta Korolczuk
    Date: 31 May 2021

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

  • ACES Practitioner Engagement Series 2021

    This year’s series will engage with a number of topical issues and will also involve several high-level officials, policy-makers, academics and practitioners. Topics will include the EU-Ukraine relations, the EU ‘Integrated Approach’ and the European Peace Facility as well as De Facto States and Land-for-Peace Agreements.

    This event (or series) is co funded by the Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Commission

    The EU and Ukraine

    Ukraine is a priority partner for the EU. In 2014 the EU and Ukraine signed an Association Agreement which also includes provisions for a Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Area (DCFTA). In the same year, the EU also launched the European Union Advisory Mission Ukraine (EUAM Ukraine) in the aftermath of the events of the Euromaidan “Revolution of Dignity”. In parallel to these, the EU also introduced restrictive measures and economic sanctions targeting specific sectors of the Russian economy, following the latter’s illegal annexation of Crimea. 

    Speaker: Katarína Mathernová, Antti Hartikainen
    Date: 18 November 2021

    The European Union and Peacebuilding: The ‘Integrated Approach’ and the European Peace Facility

    The 2016 EU Global Strategy introduced the development of an integrated approach to conflicts as a strategic priority for EU external action. In 2018, the Council of the EU adopted conclusions on the ‘integrated approach to external conflicts and crises’. The aim of this initiative is to introduce a more coherent use of the various policies and instruments at the disposal of the EU, ranging from conflict prevention and diplomacy, security and defence to development, humanitarian aid, trade and finance.

    Speaker: Anne Koistinen, Rory Domm
    Date: 22 November 2021

    De Facto States and Land-for-Peace Agreements: Territory and Recognition at Odds?

    Dr. Shpend Kursani will present his book. The book presents an analytical framework which assesses how 'land-for-peace' agreements can be achieved in the context of territorial conflicts between de facto states and their respective parent states. The volume examines geographic solutions to resolving ongoing conflicts that stand between the principle of self-determination and the principle of territorial integrity.

    Speaker: Shpend Kursani, Olesya Vartanyan
    Date: 25 November 2021

  • Fighting Global Deforestation

    Deforestation is widely recognized as a major source of global environmental degradation and climate change, while also contributing in many countries to rampant illegality and violations of community rights. In this panel discussion we will consider the ambitious goals and innovative provisions of EU deforestation regulation, focusing particularly on the proposed EU demand-side measures, and the practical challenges of making them work effectively.

    Panel 1: Ambitions and Challenges: Making Due Diligence Work for Forests

    This panel will consider the ambitious goals and innovative provisions of the deforestation regulation, focusing particularly on the proposed EU demand-side measures, and the practical challenges of making them work effectively. 

    • Date: 1 February 2022
    • Speakers: Delara Burkhardt, Rob Busink, Ingrid Hontis, Alison Hoare, Pablo Pacheco , Jonathan Zeitlin (moderator)

    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Panel 2: Cooperation with Partner Countries

    This second panel considers supply-side measures undertaken in partnership with producer countries to combat deforestation and forest degration, including the new Forest Partnerships, drawing inter alia on the experience of the FLEGT VPAs, to enhance both the legitimacy and the effectiveness of EU external action against deforestation.

    • Date: 24 February 2022
    • Speakers: Bojan Grlaš, Sebastian Lesch, Julia Christian, Mardi Minangsari, Obed Osuwu-Addai, Maria Weimer (moderator) 

    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

  • Racism and Law in Europe

    "Belief" in Rights, Islamophobia and the Politics of the Veil

    The tension between human rights and gender difference has played out explicitly of the past two decades in the decisions of the European Court of Human Rights concerning the veil. Ratna Kapur discusses the politics of the veil that inform these decisions and the fear and anxiety over alternative world views and ways of being that are exposed by them. 

    Speaker: Ratna Kapur
    Date: 22 September 2021
     

    Critical Race Theory in the German-speaking context

    Critical Race Theory has been employed by legal scholars and practitioners in the U.S.A. to point to and engage with structural forms of racial discrimination in U.S. law. Although historical structures of racial discrimination continue to persist in different European jurisdictions, Critical Race Theory is largely absent in continental European legal discourse. 

    Speaker: Mathias Moschel
    Date: 28 October 2021
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Structural Racism and Race Discrimination

    Professor Atrey's recently published article explores the relationship between ‘racism’ and ‘race discrimination’. It shows that once we look beyond racism understood colloquially as individual bigotry, to racism understood in a structural sense as embedded in the social, economic, cultural and political dimensions of the State itself, it is possible to locate racism in the practice of discrimination law, within the category of race discrimination.

    Speaker: Sheyra Atrey
    Date: 23 November 2021
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    International Migration Law and Coloniality

    In European human rights law, it is taken for granted that states have the sovereign right to regulate migration. A right to be admitted to a country of which one is not a national, or a right not to be expelled, exists only in exceptional cases. This session discusses the colonial and racial origins of states’ right to exclude non-nationals and thus modern international migration law.

    Speaker: Thomas Spijkerboer
    Date: 8 December 2021
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Mapping the 'White International' through fiction

    The ‘International’ was invented by Jeremy Bentham in 1789. What began as ‘a legal term’ by the end of the 19th century had morphed into an imaginary that ‘evoked an imperial, Eurocentric order of the world’. 

    Speaker: Chris Gevers
    Date: 25 January 2022
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

  • The EU’s Common European Asylum System: Quo Vadis?

    The perfect and the incoherent as the enemies of the good: why humane EU borders remain elusive

    In the first event in a new ACES Migration Network Series on the EU’s Common European Asylum System convened by Jeroen Doomernik, Gerald Knaus oulines why the EU urgently needs an alternative and humane policy for controlling irregular migration, which does not break legal principles by resorting to force or illegal refoulement.

    Speaker: Gerald Knaus
    Date: 18 January 2022 
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Addressing secondary movements in the Common European Asylum System: opportunities, realities and challenges

    Although the types, reasons and scale of secondary movements are to a large extend unknown, the phenomenon has been on the radar of policy makers since the introduction of the Schengen regime and its prevention became one of the major aims of the Common European Asylum System (CEAS). 

    Speaker: Martin Wagner (ICMPD)
    Date: 1 February 2022
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Rural Arrival: Small Towns and Rural Regions as Places of Refugee Reception

    n the peak year of the ‘European asylum crisis’ 2015, nearly 900,000 asylum seeking migrants arrived in Germany, the largest number ever recorded. Following a quota system based on the idea of burden sharing, a considerable share of those migrants were re-distributed to rural regions and small and medium sized towns. Considering that those localities usually have few experiences with immigrants, the development of an integrative environment became a challenging exercise.

    Speaker: Birgit Glorius
    Date: 15 March 2022
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Coping with Migrants and Refugees: Multilevel Governance across Europe

    Asylum seekers’ reception represents a classic multilevel governance (MLG) challenge, i.e., one that brings a multiplicity of interdependent actors into play, ranging from public authorities at different levels of government to non-governmental actors like NGOs and social movements. Based on the findings of the H2020 Project Ceaseval, in this talk I will shed light on the scarce multilevel governance that actually underpinned policymaking processes in the aftermath of the 2015 refugee crisis in Germany, Finland, Italy, Spain and Greece.

    Speaker: Tiziana Caponio
    Date: 28 April 2022
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    The Common European Asylum System: Organised Hypocrisy and Beyond

    In the face of rising numbers of asylum seekers and refugees in the world and rising xenophobic movements at home the Common European Asylum System has increasingly turned into a system of organized hypocrisy in which its normative ambition at high protective standards is undermined by the political reality of protectionist policies.

    Date: 19 May 2022
    Speaker: Sandra Lavenex
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

  • ACES Practitioner Engagement Series 2022

    The EU as a global actor

    Dr. Dimitris Bouris (he/him) (UvA) Jean Monnet Chairholder of ATHENA hosted the 7th Practitioners Engagement Series in cooperation with the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES). This year’s series will engage with a number of topical issues and will also involve several high-level officials, policy-makers, academics and practitioners. Topics will include the EU’s Common Security and Defence Policy, the EU Global Strategy, Feminist and Queer Perspectives to EU Foreign Policy as well as the EU’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

    The EU as a Global Actor? Reflecting on the Common Security and Defence Policy, the EU Global Strategy and the Strategic Compas

    • Speaker: Samuel Doveri Vesterbye
    • Date: 10 November 2022 

    Feminist and Queer Perspectives to EU Foreign Policy

    • Speakers:  Annika Ojala and Hanna Muehlenhoff
    • Date: 17 November 2022 

    The EU’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine

    • Speakers: Olga Burlyuk, Elena Lazarou, Katarína Mathernová, Anita Sęk-Pajić 
    • Date: 24 November 2022 

Single events

  • 2024

    Building the European AI Future

    In December 2023, the EU finally reached agreement over the AI Act, celebrated as the legal fundament for a safe and prosperous digital European future. Look past the political accord, however, and central questions are unanswered: from managing the wider societal impact of AI and its military implications to ensuring that the AI Act rules are actually enforced. This event explored the political challenges that emerge—or remain—in AI governance now that an EU framework has been agreed upon.

    • Date: 26 January
    • Speakers: Lisa Vermeer, Pegah Maham, Joanna Bryson, Marieke de Goede, Daniel Mügge

    Knowledge-Driven Power in a Digitized World

    Who holds, controls, and creates power in contemporary societies? On the occasion of their new book, The New Knowledge: Information, Data and the Remaking of Global Power, Blayne Haggart and Natasha Tusikov presented their answer to this question. They tooke us along from Google’s Internet-of-Things projects, new modes of property and knowing that arose during the Covid-19 pandemic, and the ideology through which power is exercised.

    • Date: 8 February
    • Speakers: Marta Morvillo, Natasha Tusikov, Blayne Haggart, Niels ten Oever, Joris van Hoboken

    Data is Dead

    The future of the tech industry is in infrastructure, not data. This means that those companies that control key infrastructure, like chips and cloud computing, hold sway. Companies like ASML, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services (AWS), rather than X or Meta, will become the most powerful players. Is it their choices that will influence what our collective futures look like? Do we need to adapt our understanding of power in the tech sector to this new reality?

    • Date: 23 February
    • Speakers: Michael Veale, Corinne Cath, Sjoera Nas

    The EU and Israel’s war on Gaza

    Dr. Dimitris Bouris, Jean Monnet Chair and Associate Professor at the Department of Political Science at UvA have hosted Clare Daly, an Irish Member of the European Parliament who delivered the Annual Jean Monnet Lecture entitled: “The EU and Israel’s war on Gaza”.

    • Date: 7 March
    • Speaker: Clare Daly

    The Devastation of War: What Now for EU-Russia Relations?

    The ATHENA Jean Monnet Chair have hosted Dr Maxine David, who delivered the Annual Jean Monnet Lecture entitled: The Devastation of War: What Now for EU-Russia Relations?

    • Date: 14 March
    • Speaker: Maxine David

    Judicial Dialogue and People in Situations of Vulnerability in Conflict with the Law

    On March 14, Vicki Prais, an international human rights lawyer, delivered a lecture on Judicial Dialogue and People in Situations of Vulnerability in Conflict with the Law. The session explores the judicial dialogue between national and European courts (the European Court of Justice and the European Court of Human Rights) in the human and fundamental rights space.

    • Date: 14 March
    • Speaker: Vicki Prais
  • 2023

    Antiliberal Internationalism in the 20th Century: Beyond Left & Right?

    Since the turn of the millennium, all over the globe new forms of international collaboration have surfaced that explicitly position themselves against the liberal international order established after the fall of the Berlin Wall. 

    • Date: 11-13 January
    • Speakers: Stefan Couperus, Glenda Sluga, Matthijs Lok, Arnab Dutta, Sungik Yang, Tomohito Baji, Sudha Rajagopalan, Robin de Bruin, Rachel Johnston-White, Mriganka Mukhopadhyay, Katherine Booska, Avital Sicron, Gulnaz Sibgatullina, Chloe Kattar, Glenda Sluga & Benjamin Teitelbaum, Marlene Laruelle, Hugo Canihac, Jonathan Voges, Gonzague de Reynold, Alfredo Rocco, Hugo Andres Krüss, Iason Zarikos, Georgios Giannakopoulos, Ivan Kalmar, Theresa Kuhn, Marjet Brolsma, Arnab Dutta, Memtimin Semet, Klaus Weber, Brandon Bloch, Chloe Kattar, Matthew Myers, Matthijs Lok, António Costa Pinto, Kathy Hull, Baijayanti Roy, Siobhán Amelia Smith, Daniel Knegt. 
           

    Strategic litigation in the European Union

    Strategic litigation is a judicial procedure initiated in an individual case with the purpose of triggering broader socio-political change. This workshop brings together activist lawyers, scholars, and journalists with the objective to map the potentials and pitfalls of strategic litigation using EU law.

    • Date: 16-17 January
    • Speakers: Maria Weimer, Marta Morvillo, Davide Gnes Milka Sormunen, Marion Guerrero, Michelle Jonker Argueta, Daniel Kelemen, Pola Cebulak, Christina Eckes, Mario Pagano, Paivi Leino-Sandberg, Michaela Krömer, Virginia Passalacqua, Lisa-Marie Komp, Philip Paiement, Stefanie Egidy, Stefan Salomon, Oliver Grimm, Reilly Anne Dempsey Willis

    Securing the future through affective engagement? Emotions in the European Union’s security policy

    Emotions matter in international politics. For example, fear, anger but also empathy shape European political responses to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Although scholarship in International Relations and Political Geography has long acknowledged the role of affective dynamics in international politics, research has hardly studied yet how emotions affect the European Union’s foreign and security policy.

    • Date: 19 January 2023
    • Speakers: Olga Eisle, Seda Gürkan, Simon Koschut, Trineke Palm, Karen E. Smith, Özlem Terzi, Rosa Sanchez Salgado, Andrew Telford & Hanna L. Muehlenhoff 

    The Law, Politics and Practice of Delegated Rulemaking in the European Union

    In this one-day workshop we aim to rekindle the tripartite dialogue on the topic of delegated rulemaking in the European Union among legal scholars, political scientists and policymakers through the lenses of law, political science and institutional practice.

    • Date: 19 Janury 2023
    • Speakers: Zamira Xhaferri, Florin Coman-Kund, Herwig C. H. Hofmann, Alexander Türk, Ellen Vos, Leigh Hancher, Torbjørg Jevnaker, Jonathan Zeitlin, Thomas Christiansen, Giulia Gallinella, Ana Mar Fernández Pasarín, Mendeltje van Keulen, Liesbeth A. Campo, Jeanette Ciantar, Peter Barany, Rita Sousa, Miriam Schoeps, Andrea Lanaia 

    The Politics of Jewish Literature and the Making of the post-WWII World

    Jewish literature has struck a powerful chord in post WWII global culture. At a time when European Jewish culture had been all but destructed, it paradoxically obtained an unprecedented urgency among mostly non-Jewish audiences. At the same time, the history of the holocaust gained a central place in the intellectual and moral restoration of the Western world.

    • Date: 8 February 2023
    • Speakers: David Wertheim and Guido Snel 

    How (not) to justify refugee selection? Unjust hierarchies, ‘connected histories’ and institutional racism

    A lecture by Eszter Kollar on February 16, hosted by the Institute of Migration and Ethnic Studies network (IMES) and Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES).

    • Date: 16 February 2023
    • Speaker: Eszter Kollar

    The Future of the European Security Architecture

    As threats to public security become more complex and globalised, national and targeted security strategies are increasingly replaced by a European security architecture. This security approach, also visible in asylum and immigration policies, relies on the extensive use of personal data collected in large-scale databases which are rendered interoperable and searchable through modern and potentially self-learning technologies.

    • Date: 23-24 February 2023
    • Speakers: Evelien Brouwer, Elspeth Guild, Valsamis Mitsilegas, Stefan Salomon, Christian Thönnes

    Authoritarian Practices in a Global Age

    The newest book of Marlies Glasius - professor in International Relations at the Department of Politics at the Amsterdam Institute for Social Science Research (AISSR) - provides a parsimonious framework for recognizing and analysing contemporary manifestations of authoritarianism beyond the state, alongside a number of empirical case studies.

    • Date: 7 March 2023
    • Speaker: Marlies Glasius, Justus Uitermark

    Majority Minority; How do societies respond to great demographic change?

    On March 9, the IMES network and ACES have hosted a lecture by Justin Gest (Schar School of Policy and Government, (George Mason University) about the theme of his newest book 'Majority Minority; How do societies respond to great demographic change?'

    • Date: 9 March 2023
    • Speaker: Justin Gest | Discussants: Jeroen Doomernik, Marcel Maussen | Moderator: Saskia Bonjour

    Exodus and Voice: How the Migrant Caravan Motivated Political Participation in Honduras

    Emigration from Central America to the United States remain consistently high since the 1990s. Unlike the rest of Latin America, countries such as Honduras, El Salvador, and Guatemala did not show a decline in migration in the early 2000s and remains among the highest contributors to Latin American migration today. 

    • Date: 20 March 2023
    • Speake: Jesse Acevedo

    Suspect Citizenship - a lecture by Jean Beaman

    By considering the multifaceted dimensions of citizenship and belonging in France, guest speaker Jean Beaman will demonstrate the limitations of full societal inclusion for France’s non-white denizens and how French Republicanism continues to mark, rather than erase, racial and ethnic distinctions.

    • Date: 22 March 2023
    • Speaker: Jean Beaman

    Book Launch: Promises and Pitfalls of Liberalism 

    Liberalism has been much maligned in the last decade for its failure to provide people with a sense of collective identity and meaning. But for many people, liberal ideas themselves provide this meaning. In this interdisciplinary exchange, two books are discussed that, respectively, explore the extraordinary rise of nativism in liberal societies, and the possibilities for revivifying liberal ideals in a changing world.

    • Date: 29 March 2023
    • Speakers: Jan Willem Duyvendak, Josip Kesic, Timothy Stacey, Matthijs Rooduijn, Irene Stengs, Tamar de Waal, Yolande Jansen

    Escaping the Politics Trap? EU Integration Pathways Beyond the Polycrisis

    In this workshop, intended to prepare a follow-up special issue of the Journal of European Public Policy, the contributors will investigate the political dynamics of polycrisis, and explore the strategic pathways through which the Union may escape a self-reinforcing ‘politics trap’ in the face of a novel and different polycrisis.

    • Date: 30 March 2023
    • Speaker: Francesco Nicoli and Jonathan Zeitlin

    Care Activism

    On April 4th, the Institute of Migration and Ethnic Studies network (IMES) and Amsterdam Centre for European Studies (ACES) will host a lecture by Ethel Tungohan about how migrant domestic workers form social justice movements in support of their communities in Canada, Hong Kong, Singapore and the Philippines.

    • Date: 4 April 2023
    • Speaker: Ethel Tungohan

    Special Issue Launch: Border and im/mobility entanglements in the Mediterranean

    In this event, the co-editors and contributors of the Environment and Planning D: Society and Space Special Issue, “Border and im/mobility entanglements in the Mediterranean”, will offer short introductions to their respective articles. Using the concept of ‘entanglement’, each piece in the Special Issue invites to rethink critical work on border and migration policies and practices across the Mediterranean.

    • Date: 6 April 2023
    • Speaker: Polly Pallister-Wilkins, Beste İşleyen, Nora El Qadim, Zeynep Kaşlı. Noemi Bergesio, Luiza Bialasiewicz, Hassan Ould Moctar, Nick Dines, Anissa Maâ

    EU health governance: An opportunity for trust and solidarity?

    On 13-14th April 2023, the Law Centre for Health & Life (Faculty of Law), in collaboration with the Amsterdam Centre of European Studies (ACES), and the Amsterdam Centre for European Law and Governance (ACELG) organise a conference on 'EU health governance: An opportunity for trust and solidarity?' in Amsterdam at DROOG. This project is co-funded by European Commission Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Union.

    • Date: 13 April 2023
    • Speaker: Barbara Prainsack, Heidi Larson, Tammy Hervey

    PhD Seminar | Situating AfroSwedish Studies, Situating the Study of Race in Europe

    From April 10th to May 5th, 2023 ACES will be hosting Nana Osei-Kofi (Oregon State University) as the centre’s visiting scholar. Her current research as a critical feminist scholar centers on the experiences and conditions faced by people of African descent in Europe generally and Sweden specifically. This seminar is the first in a series of lectures given by Nana Osei-Kofi. This seminar is intented for PhD candidates.

    • Date: 17 April 2023
    • Speaker: Nana Osei-Kofi

    Book launch: Europe against Revolution

    Europe in the twenty-first century seems divided between cosmopolitans on the one hand, and national conservatives on the other. In Europe against Revolution (Oxford University Press 2023), Matthijs Lok shows that conservatives in the past were not nationalists but rather Europeans who were inspired by the Enlightenment, and, at the launch, Lok will talk with historians and journalists about the conclusions and current events of his book.

    • Date: 18 April 2023
    • Speakers: Theresa Kuhn, Annelien de Dijn, Beatrice de Graaf, Marijn Kruk & Matthijs Lok

    Is Europe a joke? On epics and counter-epics

    As the The European Review of Books turns one year old, the questions remain: Books? Review? Europe? To ask what makes a “European” magazine is to ask what and who makes (or unmakes) a European culture.

    • Date: 8 May 2023
    • Speakers: Luiza Bialasiewicz & George Blaustein

    Book Talk - Coming in: Sexual politics and EU accession in Serbia

    What is progress? When can we celebrate that progress has been made? And if there is progress, progress for whom? In this talk, Koen Slootmaeckers has explored and analysed the symbolism of LGBT rights in contemporary politics.

    • Date: 10 May 2023
    • Speakers: Koen Slootmaeckers & Hanna Muehlenhoff

    European Press Freedom under Pressure

    Press freedom is increasingly coming under pressure across Europe. Reporters Without Borders have repeatedly measured a decline in press freedom in many European countries over the last few years, including the Netherlands. Where does this come from? And what are the various problems associated with and arising from declining press freedom?

    • Date: 17 May 2023
    • Speakers: Kathleen Beckers, Tarlach McGonagle, Scott Eldrige II & Katjana Gattermann

    Book launch: Diversity of Belonging in Europe: Public Spaces, Contested Places, Cultural Encounters

    Belonging - or not belonging - lies at the core of many of the recent ‘crises’ and ongoing processes of change that continue to shape as well as to shake up contemporary Europe. New forms of socio-spatial inclusion and exclusion have been both embraced and contested – and always (re)negotiated – as part of ongoing processes of social change, connected to migration and displacement, post-socialism and decolonisation, populism and polarisation.

    • Date: 23 May 2023
    • Speakers: Susannah Eckersley, Elisabeth Niklasson, Irene Stengs & Claske Vos

    The State of European Literature 2023

    On 31 May 2023 renowned writer Fatma Aydemir will deliver the fourth State of European Literature. The State of European Literature is an annual lecture delivered by a renowned author or poet of international stature, about the state of literature and the state of Europe through the perspective of literature.

    • Date: 31 May 2023
    • Speaker: Fatma Aydemir

    Migration and Social Change

    On June 6, ACES will host a lecture by Volha Charnysh (Assistant Professor at MIT). During the talk, the author will present the paper “Migration and Social Change: Evidence from post-WWII displacement in Germany” and will shed new light on the political consequences of large-scale migration and religious heterogeneity.

    • Date: 6 June 2023
    • Speaker: Volha Charnysh 

    The Transformation of the Portuguese Right-wing Electorate

    Marina Costa Lobo (Institute of Social Sciences of the University of Lisbon) will present a research paper which analyses recent electoral developments within the Right in Portugal. Namely, the relative electoral decline of the centre-right PSD and the Right’s recent fragmentation.

    • Date: 8 June 2023
    • Speaker: Marina Costa Lobo  

    The Choices of Global Economic Governance After the Cold War

    ACES is proud to host Dr. Daniel Drezner (Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy), who will be giving a talk entitled The Choices of Global Economic Governance After the Cold War.

    • Date: 14 June 2023
    • Speaker: Daniel Drezner

    Researching Illiberalism: Rights, Roles and Responsibilities of a Researcher

    This workshop builds on the discussion launched by the first “Analysing Illiberalism” workshop hosted by ACES on 3-4 November 2022. The second edition is focused on the (self-positionality of scholars, who, by the nature of their work, become involved in contemporary social and political debates. Papers presented at the workshop will comprise a special issue of The Journal of Illiberalism Studies, which aims to bring to the forefront existing challenges, ethical issues and risks of researching illiberal actors and institutions.

    • Date: 16 - 17 June 2023

    The Lost Future and How to Reclaim It

    The future seems increasingly uncertain. Our democracies are failing to prevent financial crises, energy shortages, climate change and war—so how can we look to the future with confidence? In his new book, The Lost Future: And How to Reclaim It, Jan Zielonka argues that it is democracy’s shortsightedness that makes politics stumble in our increasingly connected world. Tonight, he will discuss his book with Caroline de Gruyter and Luiza Bialasiewicz.

    • Date: 20 June 2023
    • Speakers: Jan Zielonka, Caroline de Gruyter & Luiza Bialasiewicz

    Shared Identity in Crisis: A Comparative Study of Support for the EU in the Face of the Russian Threat

    Julia Schulte-Cloos gave a lecture entitled "Shared Identity in Crisis: A Comparative Study of Support for the European Union in Response to the Russian Threat.", organized by ACES. The lecture increased the understanding of the complex nature of identity-based support for the EU in times of crisis.

    • Date: 28 June 2023
    • Speaker: Julia Schulte-Cloos

    Amsterdam Summer School: The Coloniality of Migration Politics in Europe

    The UvA summer school The Coloniality of Migration Politics in Europe invited PhD researchers to critically explore legacies and dis/continuities of coloniality in citizenship- and migration politics in Europe. In a series of workshops, lectures and intensive feedback sessions, participants critically engaged with the legacies of (methodological) whiteness and racism in migration studies, dis/continuities between colonial mobility governance and contemporary migration politics, as well as tackle their own positionalities and roles in knowledge production systems.

    • Date 28 - 31 August
    • Speakers: Rosalba Icaza Garza & Joe Turner

    Navigating the Future: 'Strategic foresight' building 'strategic preparedness' for a rapidly evolving world

    In a rapidly evolving world driven by innovation, the ability to anticipate and prepare for future advancements is crucial. Dr. Lieve van Woensel, with over 30 years of experience in foresight methodologies, spoke in SPUI25 about the potential of societal impact of complex scientific and technological developments regarding to policymakers.

    • Date: 11 July 2023
    • Speaker: Lieve van Woensel

    Insurgent Ecologies – Extremism and Climate Breakdown in Europe

    During the workshop 'Insurgent Ecologies – Extremism and Climate Breakdown in Europe' participants had the opportunity to explore the critical intersections between extremism, climate breakdown, and societal responses. The ACES workshop aimed to address questions related to the labeling of activists, the rise of far-right ideologies, and the implications of state repression on urgent climate activism.

    • Date: 8 September 2023

    Emotions in European climate politics: An interdisciplinary workshop

    The interdisciplinary Emotions in European Climate Politics workshop has a focus on emotions and affective dynamics in European climate change politics, including the role of the EU in these debates and Europe in a global context. 

    • Date: 28 - 29 September 2023
    • Speakers: Andrew Telford, Hanna Muehlenhoff, Rosa Sanchez Salgado & Linda Bos

    Philip Schleifer presents book about global market shifts

    In this talk, Philip Schleifer (Department of Political Science) discussed his new book 'Global Shifts – Business, Politics, and Deforestation in a Changing World Economy'.

    • Date: 14 September 2023
    • Speaker: Philip Schleifer

    Changing Dynamics of India-EU Relations

    As part of the ETEE exchange network, professor Gulshan Sachdeva, the Jean Monet chair and professor of European Studies of the Jawaharlal Nehru University (New Delhi, India) provided a lecture on the changing EU-India relationships.

    • Date: 14 September 2023
    • Speaker: Gulshan Sachdeva

    Contested Objects, Connected Histories project

    ACES is delighted to invite you to a keynote presentation by Prof. Dr. Joachim Baur on October 16th. Join the lecture and learn more about migration research and innovative ways of sharing its findings.

    • Date: 16 October 2023
    • Speaker: Joachim Baur

    Roundtable: Diversity in German politics

    Join us for an insightful event delving into the dynamics surrounding the careers of immigrant-origin politicians in Germany. Led by prominent academics and researchers, this discussion will shed light on the factors influencing the termination of these careers, including the potential role of migration-related challenges and discrimination.

    • Date 19 October 2023
    • Speakers: Andreas Wüst, Gözde Çelik, Özgür Özvatan and Liza Mügge

    Governing the RRF: Drafting, Implementing, and Monitoring National Recovery and Resilience Plans as an Interactive Multi-Level Process

    We were delighted to welcome Professor Jonathan Zeitlin to talk about his study of the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF).

    • Date: 30 October
    • Speaker: Jonathan Zeitlin

    Who cares! Intimate mobilities — Love, Family, and Sex in Asian migration in Europe

    A workshop where the intersection of intimate relations and state interventions in the lives of East Asian migrants in Europe will be explored.

    • Date: 8-9 November
    • Speaker: Maggi Leung

    Europe’s periphery at the core

    This evening we discussed the changing political and economic significance of CEE. Their capacity to (re)draw international coalitions and their ascendency on the international stage more broadly raise different questions.

    • Date: 9 November
    • Speaker: André Gerrits, Ferenc Laczó, Karolina Pomorska

    Stepping Out of the Comfort Zone: (How) Can Niche and Challenger Parties Expand Their Electorate?

    An enlightening talk by Tarik Abou-Chadi, where he delves into the intriguing topic of political niche and challenger parties and their strategies to broaden their electoral base. Tarik will introduce a groundbreaking framework that uncovers the conditions enabling these parties to step out of their comfort zones and appeal to a wider spectrum of voters.

    • Date: 16 November
    • Speaker: Tarik Abou-Chadi

    Poland and European East-West Cooperation in the 1970s: The Opening Up

    In her book, Dr. Komornicka offers an international reading of the Polish socialist regime’s history in the 1970s, and its opening up to the West. It bridges Poland’s socialist domestic history with critical developments of the global and European 1970s, such as détente in the Cold War, western European integration, and globalization.

    • Date: 23 November
    • Aleksandra Komornicka

    Geopolitics and Democracy

    Peter Trubowitz and Brian Burgoon presented their new book 'Geopolitics and Democracy' at SPUI25. They will introduce the highlights of this interpretation and vision, and several leading scholars of international relations and politics shall offer their own comments and critiques.

    • Date: 8 December
    • Speakers: Peter Trubowitz, Brian Burgoon

    Re-Thinking EU Enlargement

    The Jean Monnet Workshop on "Re-Thinking EU Enlargement" convenes experts and scholars to explore critical challenges in the European Union's expansion. The event delved into the dynamic interplay of security, stability, and democracy.

    • Date: 1 December
    • Speakers: Frank Schimmelfennig, Adam Lazowski, Andrea Ott, Gergana Noutcheva, Elena Basheska, Ebru Turhan, Isabelle Ioannides, Jelena Džankić, Klemens H. Fischer, Oliver Schwarz, Nisida Gjoksi, Robin de Bruin

     

  • 2022

    Central banks beyond price stability

    Speaker(s): Nik de Boer, Will Bateman, Eric Monnet, Jens van ‘t Klooster, Agnieszka Smoleńska 
    Date: 13 January 2022

    How should central banks take account of goals beyond price stability? And does a broader role for central banks require rethinking their independence from democratic politics? These issues will form the focal point of a workshop hosted by the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies, the Amsterdam Center for Law and Economics and The Sustainable Global Economic Law (SGEL) research project.

    State phobia or state philia? Rethinking the state after Covid

    Has the Corona pandemic brought about a fundamental rethinking of the concept of the state?  This ACES project aims to make sense of the radically contrasting views of the "state philia" and "state phobia" that have been so clearly on display in the time of the pandemic.

    Speaker(s): Katjana Gattermann, Theresa Kuhn, Matthijs Lok, Chantal Mak, Marc Tuters
    Date: 3 February 2022
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Displacement and Resettlement in the Global South

    How does exposure to refugees affect elections, development, and citizen support for migration within the Global South? In the context of wealthy consolidated democracies, recent studies have found that when voters are more exposed to refugees, they punish incumbents and turn to far-right parties. Yet there is a dearth of studies on the electoral consequences of refugee-hosting in developing countries, where the majority of refugees reside and politics often do not fall on a left-right divide.

    Speaker(s): Yang Yang Zhou
    Date: 8 February 2022
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Ukraine and Europe beyond great power geopolitics

    This panel discussion aims to bring valuable historical and geographical context to understanding the various scales of the current crisis in Ukraine, beyond simply a game of great power geopolitics.

    Speaker(s): Luiza Bialasiewicz, Michael Kimmage, Mykola Martorykh, Olga Burlyuk, John O’Loughlin, Gwendolyn Sasse, Gerard Toal
    Date: 15 February 2022
    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    ACES Webinar on EU Governance of Anti-Money Laundering

    For the past three decades, the EU and other advanced economies have sought to combat money laundering and terrorist financing through increasingly stringent rules and scrutiny requirements for financial transactions.

    Speaker(s): Marieke de Goede, Karel Lannoo, Nicolas Véron, Jonathan Zeitlin (moderator)
    Date: 16 February 2022
    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Cara Nine on displacement, autonomy and adaptation

    Cara Nine's paper on Displacement, Autonomy and Adaptation analyses the ideas of displacement, autonomy and adaptation within the context of migration. 

    Speaker(s): Cara Nine
    Date: 22 February 2022
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Ideational legacies and the politics of migration in European minority regions

    Why do policies and attitudes toward immigration vary so widely across European minority regions? What determines whether political elites frame immigration as a threat or as an opportunity? Which role do ideas and historical political economy play in determining how immigration is perceived? 

    Speaker(s): Christina Huber
    Date: 28 February 2022

    European Objects: the troubled dreams of harmonization

    Interventions based on objects have become a dominant path for European policymaking. This book uses the term “European objects” to describe technical entities that are regulated—and thereby transformed—by European policies. It argues that taking European objects seriously offers a way to rephrase the dreams of harmonization and, eventually, rethink the constitutional strength of European integration.

    Speaker(s): Brice Laurent, Maria Weimer, Jonathan Zeitlin, Peter-Wim Zuidhof 
    Date: 4 April 2022

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Guido Snel's Negen steden – Europa van Wenen naar Istanbul

    On the occasion of the publication of Guido Snel’s new book, Negen steden – Europa van Wenen naar Istanbul, which will be in bookstores on April 26, to be published, in Dutch, by De Arbeiderspers.

    Speaker(s): Guido Snel, Chris Keulemans, Irene van der Linden 
    Date: 28 April 2022
    Watch the video recording of this event here

    The EU response to Brexit: rapid, united, effective

    The outcome of the UK referendum on 23rd of June 2016 represented a major shock for the European Union (EU). A large member state opted to exit the EU, the first member state to do so and all actors feared a domino effect and EU disintegration. This is not materialize. The response of EU 27 was rapid, united and effective. This is lecture is part of the Virtual Visions of Europe lecture series.

    Speaker(s): Brigid Laffan
    Date: 9 May 2022
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Archives of the other: Asylum and the scene of global politics

    Drawing on an archive of over 34,000 asylum appeals in the United Kingdom (UK), I propose to read the enactment of the lives of others as a scene of global politics. The asylum cases enact lines of differentiation between the UK and Europe on the one hand and what we can call ‘non-Europe’ and ‘un-Europe’ on the other.

    Speaker(s): Claudia Aradau and Beste İşleyen
    Date: 12 May 2022

    Re-thinking the Franco-German ‘cultural model’ in a global world

    Focusing on conceptions of culture and cultural practices of exchange, this conference critically examine how Franco-German culture is promoted and employed as a model of dialogue and understanding in post-conflict countries across the globe. It will especially inspect the complex interactions between this model and the imperial/colonial legacy. This workshop is organised in cooperation with the Duitsland Instituut in Amsterdam (DIA), the Goethe Institut and the Institut Français.

    Date: 9 May 2022
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Between interests and values: The future of EU trade policy

    Trade policy is arguably the strongest external policy of the European Union, and the Commission uses this policy widely to promote European interest and values around the globe. However, nowadays, the EU’s trade policy is under pressure. The growth of emerging markets reduces the relative market power of the EU, protectionist tendencies endanger the rules-based multilateral trading order and increasing opposition in EU Member States reduces the discretion of the Commission in international negotiations. 

    Speaker(s): Ignacio Garcia Bercero, Lara Wolters, Bernard Hoekman, Alejandro García Esteban, Mahrukh Doctor, Luisa Santos, Amandine van den Berghe, Katharina L. Meissner, Victor do Prado, Marie-Pierre Vedrenne, Yvo Amar and Gesa Kübek.
    Date: 13 May 2022
    Watch the recording of this event on YouTube

    Reading group: Postcolonial and postsocialist dialogues

    This is an informal reading group by ACES visiting scholar Claudia Aradau, which will discuss the analytical and methodological relevance of the term ‘postsocialism’ for discussions of postcolonialism and imperialism in International Relations.

    Speaker(s): Claudia Aradau
    Date: 20 May 2022

    The UN Global Compact for Migration and the Globalization of Border Controls

    The UN Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration expands international cooperation on travel security on the global level in a way that complements and extends transregional, transatlantic and EU cooperation on border control. The Global Compact furthers a recent trend of states “pushing borders out,” primarily through leveraging new technologies and data collection to screen incoming travelers well before arrival.

    Making Turkey, Representing Turkey

    In this shared book launch, Özge Calafato and Enno Maessen will present their new monographies. The event will focus on the contents of their respective books, which both engage with the cultural history of representation, production of identity and space in Turkey’s modern history. 

    Making of Geneva Conventions: Preparing for War

    The Geneva Conventions have hit the headlines since Putin’s invasion into Ukraine. These treaties, which represent the most important rules for armed conflict ever formulated, lay down an extensive list of protections for victims of war. But their history is often misunderstood. This roundtable, based on a new book by Boyd van Dijk, discusses the historical, legal, and political dimensions of international law in wartime. Ran with SPUI and in co-sponsorship with ARTES and Faculteit der Rechtsgeleerdheid.

    Technologies of power, power of technologies

    Workshop by ACES visiting scholar Claudia Aradau. This workshop invites PhD students and early career scholars to present work in progress that addresses the proliferation and power of technologies in governing (in)security. Technologies are broadly understood as devices, instruments and tools that are designed, deployed, and appropriated. 

    • Speaker(s): Claudia Aradau
    • Date: 30 May 2022

    Between controversy and struggle: methodological interventions

    Controversy and struggle have inspired recent methodological interventions in critical security studies. Yet, there has been little discussion about their respective histories, politics and epistemic assumptions. Controversy has been mostly associated with research in Science and Technology Studies, while struggle has been deployed in postcolonial and feminist approaches in International Relations. 

    • Speaker(s): Claudia Aradau
    • Date: 31May 2022

    Can we unlearn racism?

    Europe does not have a good track record when it comes to addressing racism—or even admitting it exists. Despite the pervasiveness of ethnic profiling, police brutality and discrimination on the housing and labor markets, countries struggle to tackle racism. In Can We Unlearn Racism? Jacob Boersema uses South Africa as a lens to understand this challenge. This event will be streamed live.

    The Perils of Belonging: Comparative Perspectives from Africa and Europe

    ACES public panel during the two-day symposium “A Celebration of Geschierean Anthropology".

    • Speaker(s): Akosua Adomako Ampofo, Achille Mbembe, Rogers Orock, Paul Mepschen, Marleen de Witte
    • Date: 31 May 2022

    The citizenship revocation and rehabilitation of young European women who joined ISIS

    Some European women who joined the Islamic State during the 2010s have had their citizenship revoked, which leaves them in a liminal state in camps at the Syrian border. Others are able to return home, where they face prosecution and potential pathways to “rehabilitation”. This public talk turns to media discussions of Shamima Begum, a British national, whose citizenship was revoked, and Laura Hansen, a Dutch national, who was rehabilitated.

    The State of European Literature

    Renowned writer Alain Mabanckou delivered the third State of European Literature, under the title ‘Pour une autre Europe’ (‘For a different Europe’). Hosted by the UvA-Faculty of Humanities and SPUI25, and supported by ACES (the Amsterdam Centre of European Studies), OSL (Onderzoeksschool Literatuurwetenschap), and the Institut Français Pays-Bas.

    • Speaker(s): Alain Mabanckou
    • Date: 16 June 2022

    EUMENIA Closing Conference

    As a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, ACES invites you to the closing conference of the Jean Monnet Network on EU-Middle East Relations, EUMENIA project. The keynote address was delivered by Ms Francesca Albanese, UN Special Rapporteur on the situation on human rights in the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967. The conference is co-funded by Erasmus Plus Programme of the European Commission.

    • Speaker(s): Francesca Albanese
    • Date: 16 and  17June 2022

    Spaces of Transnational Solidarity in the Cold War Era Europe 

    A one-day international, interdisciplinary workshop sponsored by the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies. A select group of scholars will consider the webs of support, belonging and bonding that spun across Europe and the Global South post-WWII. Prompted by the spatial turn in the humanities and social sciences, the day will be dedicated to a collaborative exploration of the ‘geographies of internationalism’ in Cold War politics and post-colonial struggles.

    • Speaker(s): Tal Zalmanovich, Dina Fainberg
    • Date: 17 June 2022

    Democratic central banking: Danger or salvation?

    Since the financial crisis and during the Covid-19 Pandemic, unconventional monetary policies have tested the boundary of monetary and fiscal policy. Quantitative easing has challenged the economic fundamentals of pre-crisis monetary policy, triggered powerful political opposition to monetary support for the financial sector and broken taboos on debt monetization. Radical global and environmental changes are also pushing central banking away from its traditional heartlands. This Conference, hosted by ACES and the Centre for International and Public Law (Australian National University) addresses the tension between democratic governance and central banking.

    • Speaker(s): Benjamin Braun, Seraina Grünewald, Clément Fontan, Professor Dr Rosa María Lastra, Eric Monnet, Manuela Moschella, Saule T. Omarova, Isabella M. Weber, Will Bateman, Nik de Boer, Leah Downey, Jens van ‘t Klooster 
    • Date: 7-8 July 2022

    Reconstituting the Consumer in EU Law and Policy: Towards a More Multi-dimensional Approach

    The ACES annual conference is stimulated by the observation that consumer roles do not fit easily into simple dichotomies between weak/passive and active/confident actors, nor can changing consumer practices in the face of digitization and the environmental crisis be captured by a mono-dimensional and mono-disciplinary perspective. Consumers today enter into more frequent and technologically more complex transactions than in the period when the current EU consumer law and policy was developed. This conference is co-funded by the Erasmus + Programme of the European Union.

    • Speakers: Kati Cseres, Giacomo Tagiuri, Koen van Zon, Brigitte Leucht, Candida Leone, Luke Herrine, Adrian Kuenzler, Giacomo Tagiuri, Yannick van den Berg, Carl Dalhammer, Evelyn Terryn, Catherine Grandclément, Marco Loos, Mateusz Grochowski, Catalina Goanta, Thomas Poell, Forward Hans Micklitz, Marie-Paule Benassi, Edwin van Houten, René Répási
    • Date: 30-31 August 2022

    Transnational governance and European Transformation

    Symposium Celebrating the Scholarship of Professor Jonathan Zeitlin. The Symposium brings together major international scholars to reflect on their own and Zeitlin’s key findings and open questions in three key aspects of ongoing governance reform – transnational governance, political economy, and the European Union. 

    • Speakers: Jonathan Zeitlin, Brian Burgoon, Luiza Bialasiewicz, John Grin, Theresa Kuhn, Amy Verdun, Ans Kolk, Anton Hemerijck, Bernardo Rangoni, Christina Eckes, Erik Jones, Frank Vandenbroucke, Francesco Nicoli, Gary Herrigel, Maria Weimer, Mark Thatcher, Maurizio Ferrera
    • Date: 8-9 September 2022

    Anthropological questions about incorporation

    As European societies confront new waves of people in flight, interaction of residents with foreign populations poses above all challenges of incorporation. This talk focuses on the experience of incorporation, renewal, and exclusion in the seven years since the “long summer” of Syrian arrivals in Germany.

    • Speaker(s): John Borneman 
    • Date: 21 September 2022

    The American Passport in Turkey

    In their new book, The American Passport in Turkey: National Citizenship in the Age of Transnationalism, Özlem Altan-Olcay and Evren Balta explore the diverse meanings and values that people outside of the United States attribute to U.S. citizenship, specifically those who possess or seek to obtain U.S. citizenship while residing in Turkey.  This event is hosted by Spui25 and co-sponsored by ACES and Turkey Studies Network (TSN).

    (un)Common Grounds

    (un)Common Grounds is a hybrid forum, gathering a network of thinker-speakers to discuss the issues raised during the 100 days of documenta fifteen in Kassel, Germany. Together with invited artists from documenta fifteen and museum practitioners, cultural historians as well as activists, we share and learn from different perspectives, experiences and observations of the exhibition. (un)Common Grounds: Reflecting on documenta 15 is co-organised by Framer Framed, Akademie van Kunsten (Society of Arts), and the Van Abbemuseum.

    • Date: 23 September 2022

    European Belonging or Membership: What does Citizenship mean?

    This public event is an opportunity for us to become familiar with the work of two visiting scholars at ACES this year, John Borneman (Princeton University) and Dora Kostakopolou (University of Leuven).

    Research methodology master class for PhD students and early career scholars

    This master class taught Dora Kostakopoulou by invites PhD students from politics, international relations, sociology, history and law to a discussion on research methodology.

    • Speaker(s): Dora Kostakopolou
    • Date: 29 September 2022

    Talking Populism

    Populism is a widely debated topic, and it generates interest across the globe. As a result, a burgeoning literature deals with many aspects of populism and its links to pressing issues such as media freedom, minority rights, and separation of powers. The Populism Interviews captures these analyses. Editor of the volume, Luca Manucci, and two of the authors, Matthijs Rooduijn and Alessandro Nai, discuss working on this most controversial of issues.

    • Speaker(s): Luca Manucci, and two of the authors, Matthijs Rooduijn, Alessandro Nai
    • Date: 30 September 2022

    Chefsache - Inside the machine room of the European Council

    In this lecture we will explore how the European Council (EUCO) has been dealing with the EU’s Covid and Energy crises. We look beyond the Heads and their Summits, at the broader system of European Council centered governance – or EUCO system. We meet the main actors and their activities, and explore the nuts and bolts of EUCO governance. 

    • Speaker(s): Sandrino Smeets
    • Date: 10 October 2022

    Moral Machines - The ethical dilemma of artificial intelligence

    In the middle of the 21st century, artificial intelligence (AI) will take many decisions on behalf of humans. Not to enslave people, but to save humanity, posits Roberto Simanowski in his talk. He looks back from the future to the present time, in which the first decisions for this development are made. Fiction for a better understanding of the present.

    Enabling sustainable mobility practices in Europe

    The conference, co-sponsored by the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies and the Sustainable Global Economic Law (SGEL) research project, is a series of panels discussing specific angles and questions on the role of rules and policies in enabling citizens to power Europe’s sustainable mobility transition(s).

    • Speaker(s): Candida Leone, Yannick van den Berg, Dea van Lierop, Pavlos Tafidis, Theodoros G. Iliopoulos, Carlo Maria Colombo, Marc Dijk, Kathrin Raunig, Vincent Bretschneider, Nicola Ruccia, Josje de Vogel, Lars Kjerluf Petersen, Luca Bertolini, Marco te Brömmelstroet & Anna Nikolaeva, Debbie Hopkins, Yolande Strengers, Guido Smorto, Ülkü Tanriverdi, Esther van Zimmeren, Wouter Verheyen, Toke Christensen, Elena Mas Tur, Onur Çağdaş Artantas, Jules Vaessen, Carey Curtis
    • Date: 27-28 October 2022

    Il-, anti-, non-: liberalism and its contestations

    The developments of the last three decades—the rise of the populist right, globalisation of culture wars, sharpening ideological polarisation—have led scholars to think of novel ways to capture changing political realities. Widely-used terms such as ‘populism’, ‘conservatism’, or ‘democratic backsliding’, increasingly fall short in describing ongoing transformations including the disappearance of the ideological centre, the driving power of emotions, and blurring distinctions between the right and the left.

    The personalization of politics in the European Union

     In her new book, Katjana Gattermann studies the interplay between four key dimensions of personalization concerning institutions, media, politicians, and citizens in EU politics, and, at this book launch, she and her fellow speakers will discuss how her findings have important implications for the future of personalized politics in the European Union.

    • Speaker(s): Katjana Gattermann
    • Date: 15 November 2022

    Crafting Trade and Investment Accords for Sustainable Development: Athena's Treaties

    In her new book Cordonier Segger explores how trade and investment agreements could promote more sustainable development, rather than increasing the negative social and environmental impacts of economic growth. States and other actors are attempting to integrate social and environmental considerations into trade and investment policies, towards more sustainable development. Analysing their efforts, this volume offers insights into the ways that commitments to sustainability are being operationalized in the texts of economic treaties themselves.

    • Speaker(s): Marie-Claire Cordonier Segger 
    • Date: 15 November 2022
  • 2021

    Assessing Next Generation EU

    Speakers: Paul van den Noord, Lorenzo Codogno, Jonathan Zeitlin
    Date: 30 March 2021

    This event will be discussing the arguments laid out in the paper 'Assessing Next Generation EU', written by Lorenzo Codogno and Paul van den Noord. The unprecedented fiscal package adopted by the European Council in the summer of 2020 ―dubbed Next Generation EU―is vital for the recovery of the euro area from the pandemic shock.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Digital and Intelligent Europe: EU Citizens and the Challenges of New Technologies for Civil Justice

    Speakers: Natali Helberger, Pablo Cortés, Eline Verhage, Pietro Ortolani, Tania Sourdin, Horst Eidenmüller, Manuella van der Put, Nathalie Smuha, Thomas Ledet
    Date: 1-2 April 

    This two-day Conference revolves around EU citizens in two different capacities: as consumers, and as citizens in search of justice. In this context, digital and intelligent technologies can reduce barriers to access to justice and courts by offering cheaper, faster and simpler solutions. At the same time, such technologies may pose challenges to democracy and the rule of law, where they reshape societal structures, and the way justice is delivered. Organised in cooperation with the ERC ‘Building EU Civil Justice’ project based at the Erasmus School of Law (ESL).

    Jewish Literature and the Making of Post-War Europe

    Speaker(s): Arnon Grunberg, Yolande Jansen, David Wertheim 
    Date: 28 January 2021 

    Aan de vooravond van de internationale conferentie ‘The Politics of Jewish Literature and the Making of Post-War Europe’ spreken we met schrijver Arnon Grunberg over de rol die vormen van joodse literatuur hebben gespeeld in het heruitvinden van Europa’s zelfbeeld na 1945.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Book Presentation: Resisting Europe

    Speaker(s): Raffaella A. Del Sarto, Tina Freyburg, Magali Gravier, Asli Selin Okyay, Simone Tholens, Véronique Wavre
    Date: 4 March 2021 

    The recently published book 'Resisting Europe' conceptualizes the foreign policies of Europe toward the states in its immediate southern 'neighborhood' as semi-imperial attempts to turn these states into Europe's southern buffer zone, or borderlands. Dimitris Bouris will discuss this topic with a selection of the authors of the book.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Responses to Pandemic Democracy

    Speaker(s): Stefania Milan, Eva Groen-Reijman, Adrew Reynolds, Jamal Shahine
    Date: 9 March 2021 

    As we enter the second year of the COVID-19 pandemic, politics, politicians, and political institutions have adapted to the challenge of delivering democracy in different ways. Whilst physical distancing is something we have had to come to terms with in the past year, democracy has been suffering for some time with increasing challenges for deliberation, inclusion and representation. What impact does the 2020 Pandemic have on the growing challenges that 21st Century democracy faces?

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Politics in Transition: Turning out- or inwards

    Speaker(s): Pepijn Bergsen, Caroline de Gruyter, Matt Steinglass, Luiza Bialasiwicz
    Date: 11 March 2021 

    On 17 March 2021, a new parliament will be elected in the Netherlands. Many of the issues that feature prominently in party manifestos and the campaign have an obvious international dimension: the economic recession that is manifesting itself, the European distribution of Covid vaccines, or the measures needed to tackle climate change. Moreover, the outcome of the elections impacts on the government composition, and hence on the position of the Netherlands on the EU and international stage

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    How to solve Climate change by 2030

    Speaker(s): Bas Eickhout, Veerle Engel, Geert Jan Kramer, Marian Stuiver, Laura Burgers, Robin Tschötschel
    Date: 8 April 2021 

    The next ten years are a crucial window for determining if and how Europe can uphold its commitment to achieving net-zero emissions by 2050. In this interactive session, we discuss the most important changes that need to happen in the Netherlands and how young people and their allies can have an impact and shape the next step.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    The politics of last resort 

    Speaker(s): Jonathan White, Nik de Boer, Anniek de Ruijter, Marc de Wilde, Jonathan Zeitlin
    Date: 14 April 2021 

    Prominent in the EU's recent transformations has been the tendency to advance extraordinary measures in the name of crisis response. From emergency lending to macro-economics, border management to Brexit, policies are pursued unconventionally and as measures of last resort.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Statephobia: Whose Sovereignty?

    Speaker(s): Mitchell Dean, Luiza Bialasiewicz, Marc Tuters
    Date: 29 April 2021 

    In this first episode of the Statephobia and Statephilia Series, political philosopher Mitchell Dean, one of the foremost contemporary theorists of state power, and political geographer Luiza Bialasiewicz discuss the nature of the current Covid-19 protests and their wider political as well as geopolitical implications.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Negotiating Belonging in a changing Europe

    Speaker(s): Anna Korteweg, Elizabeth Buettner, Claske Vos, Nana Kofi-Osei
    Date: 11 May 2021 

    In the context of the changing fabric of contemporary Europe, questions of belonging and non-belonging have received increasing traction in debates on migration, multiculturalism, and identity. 

    Next Generation EU and European Financial Integration

    Speaker(s): Nicolas Veron, Enrico Perotti
    Date: 12 May 2021 

    The decision in July 2021 on the NextGenerationEU program and its financing by EU bond issuance is widely viewed as a watershed moment and a step in the direction of fiscal union. Will NextGenerationEU’s reliance on cross-border risk-sharing gradually change the terms of the debates over the EU financial sector policy architecture?

    The political commissioner 

    Speaker(s): Frédéric Merand, Erik Jones, Vivien Schmidt, Christian Rauh
    Date: 26 May 2021 

    In this round table, Frédéric Merand will present his fascinating latest publication 'The Political Commissioner - a European Ethnography', which is based on original, first-hand material of an embedded observation inside the cabinet of former European Commissioner Pierre Moscovici.

    The Longer Histories of Statephobia

    Speaker(s): Matthijs Lok, Nikita Dhawan, Chiara De Cesari, Rebecca Bryant
    Date: 26 May 2021 

    Covid-19 has brought the role of the state into full visibility. It has both highlighted the unequal effects of the dismantling of welfare state regimes and appeals for a ‘return of the state’ to the provision of public goods such as healthcare. Can this moment of crisis provide opportunities for a new politics?

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Authoritarian Liberalism and the Transformation of Modern Europe

    Speaker(s): Michael Wilkinson 
    Date: 21 June 2021 

    This title recounts the transformation of Europe from the post-war era until the Euro-crisis, using the tools of constitutional analysis and critical theory. The central claim is twofold: Europe has been gradually reconstituted in a manner that combines political authoritarianism with economic liberalism and that this order is now in a critical condition.

    Carrots and Sticks: Political, economic and creative approaches to Belarus

    Speaker(s): Bob Deen, Ellen Rutten, Franka Hummels, Tasha Arlova  
    Date: 28 June 2021 

    Across the world, political leaders and institutions are condemning the brute state violence currently taking place in Belarus. The regime and its citizens are approached in various ways – from closed airspaces, via boycotts, to statements of academic and artistic support. How should we understand the current moment? And do we need a politics of carrots, sticks, or both?

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Veto Point or Policy Window? The indirect effects of direct democracy on policy change in the EU

    Speaker(s): Jale Tosun, Jonathan Zeitlin  
    Date: 16 September 2021 

    In this ACES Seminar Jale Tosun, Professor at the Univerisity of Heidelberg, will elaborate on the indirect effects of direct democracy on agenda setting processes to demonstrate that, under certain conditions, it can open a policy window for both incremental and/or transformative policy change.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Twenty years after 9/11: Prosecuting terrorist financing and the production of evidence

    Speaker(s): Marieke de Goede, Tamara Buruma, Tasniem Anwar, Rebecca Mignot-Mahdavi  
    Date: 24 September 2021 

    Two decades into the War on Terror, EU member states are under pressure to realize criminal investigations and court convictions for the financing of terrorism. New EU anti-money laundering and counter-terrorism financing Directives oblige countries to convict material support for terrorist groups and individuals. However, prosecutions and trials of terrorism financing are complex and bring up fundamental questions of law in a democratic society.

    A Return to “Normal”? Fiscal Futures in Post-Pandemic Europe

    Speaker(s): Paul van den Noord, Marco Buti, Jean Pisani-Ferry, Roel Beetsma  
    Date: 29 September 2021 

    The pandemic and the associated lockdowns produced the deepest and most disruptive downturn in the EU since World War II. This prompted the Council to lift all constraints on debt and deficits embedded in the European fiscal framework. Now that a post-pandemic Europe is on the rise, we explore what should be her fiscal future: a return to “normal” or a leap to something new?

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    The 2021 German Elections

    Speaker(s): Daniela Braun, Isabella Borucki, Juergen Maier, Lina Buttgereit, Felix Gruenewald, Andreas Schuck, Katjana Gattermann
    Date: 30 September 2021

    On 26 September 2021 German voters are asked to elect a new parliament (Bundestag). During this event we will discuss with political and communication scientists from Germany the public opinion dynamics during the election campaigns, examine voter behaviour and discuss the election outcomes.

    Roundtable on Yane Svetiev's book, ''Experimentalist Competition Law and the Regulation of Markets" 

    Speaker(s): Yane Svetiev, Paul Lugard, Paul Nihoul, Siun O’Keeffe, Rupprecht Podszun, Jonathan Zeitlin
    Date: 25 October 2021

    Yane Svetiev’s recent book details the emergence of experimentalist governance in the implementation of EU competition law and market regulation. As part of this launch event, we have invited scholars and practitioners of competition law to discuss the book's findings and arguments with the author.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Narrating Exile in and Between Europe and the Ottoman Empire/Modern Turkey

    Speaker(s): Edhem Eldem, Christine Philliou
    Date: 11/12 November 2021

    This two-day conference organized in collaboration with the Turkey Studies Network seeks to unsettle traditional narratives on exilic experiences: how to narrate refugee flows, which stories do we tell, which voices remain unheard? Focus lies on exile between Europe and (in) the (post)Ottoman lands.

    Mark Leonard on “The Age of Unpeace: How Connectivity Causes Conflict”

    Speaker(s): Mark Leonard, Thijs van der Plas, Luiza Bialasiewicz
    Date: 1 December 2021

    We thought connecting the world would bring lasting peace. Instead, it is driving us apart. In the three decades since the end of the Cold War, global leaders have been integrating the world's economy, transport and communications, breaking down borders in the hope that it would make war impossible. In doing so, however, they have unwittingly created a formidable arsenal of weapons for new kinds of conflict. In his new book, Mark Leonard argues that rising tensions in global politics are not a bump in the road - they are part of the paving.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Visiting Scholar Lecture: The Right Gays

    Speaker(s): Andrew Reynolds
    Date: 7 December 2021

    No mainstream political party robustly advocated for gay rights for the first century of modern democracy’s evolution. Then, gathering momentum in the 1970s, a cluster of left wing and liberal Western European parties begin to embrace gay and lesbian rights as part of a new project injecting individual liberty within collective social democratic norms.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Governance by data infrastructure in Post-Pandemic Europe: What Risks for Democracy?

    Speaker(s): Francesca Musiani, Linnet Taylor, Luiza Bialasiewicz, Claudia Aradau, Seda Gürses 
    Date: 9 December 2021

    The emergency rationalities of the COVID-19 pandemic have justified the widespread adoption of risk-solving sociotechnical solutions such as contact tracing apps, thermal cameras and vaccination certificates. These function as “regulatory data infrastructure”: they generate data with the goal of facilitating decision-making and/or monitoring society, including societal interactions and people’s movements. In so doing, regulatory data infrastructures are attributed functions that typically pertain to public administrations.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    LGBT politics and representation

    Speaker(s): Tofik Dibi, Lisa van Ginniken, Katie Hill, Sarah McBride, Andrew Reynolds, vreer verkerke 
    Date: 9 December 2021

    The year 2021 marks a milestone for the representation of LGBT people in Dutch politics, as the first trans woman was elected into parliament. The presence of ‘out’ elected officials in politics worldwide is increasing and LGBT people are holding their nation’s highest offices, while advocating for issues that go far beyond sexuality and gender identity. However, increased political visibility is often accompanied by increased backlash, as LGBT politicians are faced with misogyny, homophobia and transphobia. Please note that this event will now be taking place online only.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Public Debt After the Pandemic: Some Burning Questions

    Speaker(s): Paul van den Noord, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Barry Eichengreen, Waltraud Schelkle
    Date: 13 December 2021

    The pandemic and the associated lockdowns produced the deepest and most disruptive downturn in the European economy since World War II. This prompted the European Commission to suspend temporarily all constraints on debt and deficits embedded in the European fiscal framework.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Anti-Gender Campaigns and the Politics of Violence against Women in Central and Eastern Europe and Beyond

    Speaker(s): Paul van den Noord, Agnès Bénassy-Quéré, Barry Eichengreen, Waltraud Schelkle
    Date: 14 December 2021

    How do anti-gender campaigns change the politics of gender equality? Who are its protagonists? Do they only occur in Eastern Europe? And what are their consequences for gender equality, for rights, and for democracy? The book panel will engage with these questions and more as they discuss the recently published book Politicizing Gender and Democracy in the Context of the Istanbul Convention on opposition to the Council of Europe Convention on violence against women.

  • 2020

    From economic and fiscal imbalances toward a social Europe? - Seminar with Xavier Ragot

    Speaker(s): Xavier Ragot
    Date: 15 January 2020

    Europe is still plagued by economic imbalances, threatening its integrity. These economic trends, together with differences in the appreciation of geopolitical issues, are creating the risk of a reduction of the European project to the sum of national interests. There is a strong case for more-risk sharing or solidarity: it is not a political goal but an economic need.

    Going fiscal? A stylised model with fiscal capacity and a Eurobond in the Eurozone

    Speaker(s): Lorenzo Codogno and Paul van den Noord
    Date: 21 January 2020

    Codogno and Van den Noord will expand on their findings that rebalancing the policy mix away from monetary towards fiscal stimulus in the Eurozone can best be achieved at the supranational level by introducing a Eurobond together with fiscal capacity.

    Patterns of opposition to European Integration - Seminar with Mads Jensen

    Speaker(s): Mads Jensen
    Date: 23 January 2020

    Studies of Euroscepticism have made great inroads when it comes to identifying the causes of opposition towards European Integration by putting forward the Utilitarian, Identity, and Anti-Elite models. However, there is a dearth of knowledge when it comes to variation in how these explanations perform cross time and country as well as how they are linked in producing different routes to Euroscepticism. This paper addresses the gap by first producing a heat map which shows the cross-country and time variation.

    Workshop European Elections 2019

    Speaker(s): Wouter van der Brug, Katjana Gattermann and Claes de Vreese
    Date: 30-31 January 2020

    Were the European Parliamentary (EP) Elections of 2019 different from previous ones? Up until 2014 elections the dominant perspective among political scientists has been that these are second order elections where not much is at stake. Scholars have argued that the complex multi-level governance structure of the EU makes it unlikely that these elections can function in the same way as national elections.

    The Future of EU Security: issues, concepts and approaches

    Speaker(s): Marijn Hoijtink, Elke Schwarz, Raluca Csernatoni, Jessica Dorsey, Carola Westermeier, Sangeeta Goswani, Marie Djedri, Tasniem Anwar, Marieke de Goede, Daniel Pinéu, Rocco Bellanova, Paul Timmers, Louise Marie Hurel, Dagmar Rychnovska
    Date: 7 February 2020

    The third and final INTERSECT workshop is organised as a cooperation between ACES, the FOLLOW project and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam's Interdisciplinary Centre for European Studies (VICES).

    Egypt and the Politics of Migration in the Mediterranean

    Speaker(s): Gerasimos Tsourapas and Eftychia Mylona
    Date: 17 February 2020

    In this talk, Gerasimos Tsourapas examines the importance of Egypt in the management of migration flows across the Middle East and the Mediterranean, drawing on insights from his latest book. How do countries in the Southern Mediterranean manage human mobility, and what lessons can be drawn for the future of European policy-making on migration?

    PhD Masterclass with Tammy Hervey, ACES / ACELG Visiting Scholar

    Speaker(s): Tammy Hervey
    Date: 18 February 2020

    Tammy Hervey is one of the co-authors of the book: Cryer, Hervey and Sokhi-Bulley's Research Methodologies in EU and International Law. The PhD masterclass will be based on the exercises on p 114 - 117 of this book but it will be appropriate for all law PhD students, whatever their topic.

    A Shared EUropean History: Empire, Decolonisation, and the Making of Modern Europe

    Speaker(s): Liz Buettner, James Mark, Peo Hansen, Manuela Boatcă, Patrick Pasture, Laia Soto Bermant, Anne-Isabelle Richard, Lora Sariaslan, Stuart Ward, Miguel Bandeira Jerónimo, Peter van Dam, Kim Christiaens, Artemy Kalinovsky, Zsuzsa Gille
    Date: 24-25 February 2020

    During this conference the question will be asked how our histories of postwar European history might change if we took the loss of European empires and the global forces it unleashed as a starting point. Despite a vast literature on the processes of decolonisation, post-war European history has generally remained a rather insular story of continental division and unity framed primarily by the Cold War and its end. 

    You Can’t Repeal Regret: Targeting Men for Mobilization in Ireland’s Abortion Debate

    Speaker(s): Amanda Friesen
    Date: 26 February 2020 

    In this ACES / ARC-GS seminar with Visiting Scholar Amanda Friesen, the question: 'How do social movements motivate men to care about “women’s issues”?' will be discussed.

    The Masculinities of Humanitarianism: Gendering Humanitarian Policy and Practice

    Speaker(s): Lewis Turner
    Date: 27 February 2020 

    In this lecture Lewis Turner will reflect on the gendered nature of humanitarian work and will challenge the dominant perspective as humanitarian work as feminine.

    PhD Meeting with Lewis Turner - Doing research: Ethics, Practical Challenges and the Politics of Research

    Speaker(s): Lewis Turner
    Date: 28 February 2020 

    This ACES PhD meeting with Dr. Lewis Turner (ABI Freiburg) offers PhDs an opportunity to share and discuss questions or dilemmas around doing research. The meeting intends to offer a space for an open and constructive discussion. The workshop is open to PhDs across all disciplines. Also PhDs in an early stage of their research are welcome to attend.

    Recruitment of Youth in France: A Strategy of Organization?

    Speaker(s): Yamina Meziani-Remichi
    Date: 28 February 2020 

    In this seminar Yamina Meziani-Remichi will discuss the research that she conducted with a team of political and social scientists in France on the relationship between the professionals in charge of recruitment and 'young' candidates.

    Defending the Dead, Desecrating Monsters

    Speaker(s): Gene Ray
    Date: 3 March 2020

    This talk with Gene Ray, looks at some recent episodes in a history of iconoclastic class struggle in so-called public space, from the interventions of the Situationist International following May 1968 to the antifascist mobilization against the 2017 Unite the Right rally at the statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee in Charlottesville, Virginia.

    Governing Banking Union: The Single Supervisory Mechanism in Action

    Speaker(s): Jonathan Zeitlin, Alexandre Violle, Cecilia del Barrio Arleo, Jakub Gren
    Date: 6 March 2020

    The Single Supervisory Mechanism (SSM) for European Banking Union is widely recognized as one of the most significant institutional reforms introduced in response to the financial and sovereign debt crises. Aimed at enhancing financial stability by breaking up “cozy relationships” between domestic banks and supervisors, the SSM has final authority to grant and withdraw banking licenses within the Eurozone.

    Migration deals and their damaging effects

    Date: 8 October 2020

    On 8-9 October 2020, ACES and the T.M.C. Asser Instituut organise an interdisciplinary online conference on the implications of the increasing use of informal (non-binding) instruments in the field of migration.

    Unequal Europe - ACES Book panel with Jason Beckfield

    Speaker(s): Jason Beckfield
    Date: 14 September 2020

    The Euro-crisis of 2009-2012 vividly demonstrated that European Union policies matter for the distribution of resources within and between European nation-states. Throughout the crisis, distributive conflicts between the EU's winners and losers worsened, and are still reverberating in European politics today.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    The Political Economy of Structural Reforms in the EU

    Speaker(s): Paul de Grauwe and Yuemei Yi
    Date: 22 September 2020

    Reforms in labour and product markets play a central role in government policies. The Political Economy of Structural Reforms in Europe brings together leading contributions from academia, the central banks in Europe, and the OECD to argue that structural reforms can make a fundamental contribution to improve economic performance across Europe.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Differentiated Integration and the Future of Europe: Promises, Pitfalls, Pathways

    Speaker(s): Frank Schimmelfennig, Sandra Lavenex, John Erik Fossum, Catherine De Vries, Dirk Leuffen, Stefan Telle/Brigid Laffan, Michael Keating, Eulalia Rubio, Chris Lord, Jochem Wiers, Bernardo Rangoni, Maria Weimer, Jonathan Zeitlin, Christina Eckes, Sabine Saurugger, Petr Kratochvil, Ceta Noland
    Date: 30 September – 1 October 2020

    The conference will examine the development of differentiated integration within the EU, focusing on both its promises and its pitfalls. Speakers cover internal and external dimensions of differentiation, including Brexit, linking academic research to current political debates about the future of European integration.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    The EU, migration and border governance

    Speaker(s): Ali Bilgic, Paul James Cardwell, Hanna L. Muehlenhoff, Beste İşleyen, Dimitris Bouris
    Date: 5 October 2020

    Migration remains at the top of the political agenda across the European Union. Although the EU’s migration law-making competences are limited, migration is one of the most dynamic policy domains. During this event we explore the EU’s formal and informal migration and border policies.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    The ECB, the courts and the issue of democratic legitimacy after Weiss

    Speaker(s): Nik de Boer and Jens van 't Klooster
    Date: 5 October 2020

    Why did the Bundesverfassungsgericht and the ECJ come to such different answers in their rulings on the ECB’s Public Sector Purchase Programme? What new challenges is the ECB facing in implementing its monetary policy and ask to what extent judicial review can help address these.

    Enhancing the European Defence Landscape: PESCO a toddler growing up

    Speaker(s): Christos Lampropoulos and Raoul Bessems
    Date: 16 November 2020

    With this event ACES kick-offs this year's Practitioner Engagement Series. During this webinar our speakers, Colonel Christos Lampropoulos and Raoul Bessems will take stock of PESCO first initial phase, analyse its achievements, explore the goals for the second phase as well as shed light on the Dutch perspective.

    The EU and conflicts in the South Caucasus

    Speaker(s): Vassilis Maragos, Toivo Klaar, Sophia Pugsley
    Date: 19 November 2020

    This is the second event of the ACES Practitioner Engagement series. This event will shed light on the EU's role in the South Caucasus conflicts, and the different tools and policies that the EU has deployed, and the need for humanitarian access.

    Who is legally responsible for climate change?

    Speaker(s): Veerle Heyvaert, Monika Hinteregge, Laura Burgers, Chantal Mak
    Date: 12 November 2020

    The Amsterdam Centre for Transformative Private Law (ACT) and ACES organise a webinar on the fundamental differences of the democratic legitimacy of climate change litigation against state parties on the one hand, and against business entities on the other.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Clash of stereotypes? ‘Italia-Olanda’ and the battle for the Recovery Fund

    Speaker(s): Marc Leijendekker, Massimiliano Panarari, Luiza Bialasiewicz
    Date: 18 November 2020

    This webinar brings together two prominent commentators to reflect on the representations in the Italian and Dutch media. They will ask to what degree such stereotypes reflect real differences in views on the conduct of economic and political life in the two countries, as well as different views on relations with the EU?

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    The geopolitical gamble in the Eastern Mediterranean: Can the EU and Turkey find a way out of the crisis?

    Speaker(s): Angelina Eichhorst, Laura Batalla Adam, Ioannis N. Grigoriadis, Meltem Müftüler-Baç, Beste İşleyen
    Date: 26 November 2020

    This session of the ACES Practitioner Engagement Series is organised in collaboration with Instituto Affari Internazionali in Rome. During the session the speakers will discuss how to put EU-Turkey relations on a more constructive footing again.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

    Beyond the Frugal North and the Profligate South

    Speaker(s): Susi Dennison, Theresa Kuhn, Cas van der Horst, Luiza Bialasiewicz
    Date: 8 December 2020

    This webinar will present the findings of two recent cross-national surveys on solidarity in the Covid-19 crisis and support for the Recovery Fund, carried out by the European Council on Foreign Relations and by researchers within ACES.

    Watch the video recording on YouTube

  • ACES Cast

    Brought to you by the Amsterdam Centre for European Studies, ACES Cast features conversations with the Centre’s affiliates. In each episode, the podcast host, Gulnaz Sibgatullina, talks to early-career scholars and recognised experts about their research, academic journey and favourite books. Join us and get to know scholars who address the dynamics and direction of contemporary Europe.

    Click here for an overview of all ACES Cast podcasts