Europe is in crisis. Global challenges—ranging from climate change to the erosion of the rules-based international order, as starkly reflected in the human suffering in Ukraine and Palestine—are deeply intertwined with internal challenges within the continent. Populist movements, which are gaining momentum across Europe, oppose immigration and question the foundational justifications of Europe's political institutions and values. These trends can no longer be dismissed as fleeting; instead, Europe must reassess and rethink the justifications on which the continent's political constitution and self-understanding rests.
But what is actually new in this crisis and what part of the current crisis can be seen as a repetition? Europe has historically been in a near-constant state of crisis. What specific historical developments have led to this moment, and does our understanding of the situation reflect reality or the perception of others?
The Crises Redux conference will be organized by the Centre of Excellence in Law, Identity and the European Narratives (EuroStorie) funded by the Research Council of Finland. The conference will focus on the same themes that EuroStorie has been working on for the last six years: a critical analysis of the narratives that serve as the building blocks of Europe and a reassessment of the idea of Europe in relation to migration and global history.
The Crises Redux conference will focus on the European narratives and explanatory models used to understand crises, exploring how these frameworks draw on the past and envision possible futures to illuminate the reality of the problems facing contemporary Europe and the means to solve them.
We will explore how Europe’s role in the great lines of the global political economy and in the redistribution of wealth after the Second World War has been explained and how this corresponds to reality. We will examine the process of European integration as a phenomenon that has shaped the continent's development over the last decades, but which now has to rethink its foundational structures and principles; Who does “Europe” represent, and against whom is it defining itself? Finally, the conference will reflect on the place of the European welfare state in a rapidly changing world. What visions of the past and aspirations for the future underpin this model? How do Europe’s collective experiences and its worldviews function within a shifting global order?
Call for Contributions
We invite abstracts that address historical and conceptual approaches to European narratives. Submissions adopting an interdisciplinary perspective are particularly welcome, including contributions from fields such as law, history, philosophy, anthropology, cultural studies, and related disciplines.
Submission Guidelines
The deadline for submissions has passed and we have notified everyone of the selection process!
WEDNESDAY 1.10.
Think Corner
17.30-19.00: Jessica Whyte - Economic Coercion and the Crises of the (Neo) Liberal International Order
THURSDAY 2.10.
Main Building, Small Hall
9.30-10.00: Registration and welcomes
10.00-11.00: Annika Seemann - Law after the ‘Zero Hour’: The Temporalities of Legal Thought in early Postwar Europe
11.00-12.00: Panel 1: Silence and Exclusion in European imagined communities
Miika Tervonen: Deportation, “crisis” and the post-universal welfare state
Reetta Toivanen: History of United Europe: To Remember or to Forget?
12.00-13.30: Lunch Break
13.30-15.00: Panel 2: Shifting temporalities of Crisis in Europe
William King: A crisis of democracy? Counter-narratives and scepticism of direct elections in the UK, 1975-79
Lina Klymenko & Akseli Ahtiainen: Thinking About Historical Analogies Interpretively: What Role Does the Winter War Analogy Play in Finland’s Support for Ukraine?
Mirosław Michał Sadowski: Weaving Narratives of Crises through Law: Lessons and Warnings from Central and Eastern Europe
15.00-15.20: Coffee Break
15.20-17.00: Panel 3: ‘Rights’, ‘Values’ and ‘Europe’ in European History
Leila Brännström: The breakthrough of rights and the battle for the Swedish state in the 1970s and 1980s
Moritz von Kalckreuth: Shall we Simply Return to Value-Universalism? Skeptical Remarks concerning Universalization and Value-Attachments
Timo Pankakoski: Koselleck’s Europe
FRIDAY 3.10.
Main Building, Small Hall
10.00-11.00: Kiran Klaus Patel - Universalism and After: Narratives and Dynamics of European Integration since the 1980s
11.00-12.00: Panel 4: The Europe of the European Union
Agnė Oseckytė: Once Upon a Legal Order: Constitutional Identity in EU Legal Scholarship
Berfin Nur Osso: A Creeping Crisis of Migration Management? Institutional Responses and Implications for “Access” at the EU’s Physical, Legal, and Social Borders
12.00-13.30: Lunch Break
13.30-15.00: Panel 5: Borders and Movement in Europe
Floris van Doorn: A Redux of What? Some Reflections on Four Years at the EuroStorie Project
Giuliano Fleri: Crisis or Structure? Competing Narratives of Irregular Migration to Lampedusa (1990–Present)
Magdalena Kmak: EU Eastern Border and Europeanisation of the Right to Seek Asylum
Keynote Speakers:
Kiran Klaus Patel (Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München)
Anika Seemann (University of Bergen, Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy)
Jessica Whyte (University of New South Wales)
Jessica Whyte is Scientia Associate Professor of Philosophy and Law at the University of New South Wales and an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. She is a political theorist whose work integrates political philosophy, intellectual history, and political economy to analyse contemporary forms of sovereignty, human rights, humanitarianism and militarism. Her work has been published in a range of fora including Contemporary Political Theory; Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development; The Journal of Genocide Research, Law and Critique; Political Theory; South Atlantic Quarterly, and Theory and Event. She is author of Catastrophe and Redemption: The Political Thought of Giorgio Agamben, (SUNY 2013) and The Morals of the Market: Human Rights and the Rise of Neoliberalism (Verso, 2019). She is an editor of the journal Humanity: An International Journal of Human Rights, Humanitarianism and Development. She is currently writing about economic sanctions and economic coercion after the Cold War. More of her research is available here: https://unsw.academia.edu/JessicaWhyte
Kiran Klaus Patel holds the chair for modern history at Ludwig Maximilian University Munich where he also serves as the founding director of Project House Europe, LMU’s center for interdisciplinary research on the history of contemporary Europe.
Before joining LMU, he held chairs at Maastricht University (2011–2019) and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy (2007–2011), and an assistant professorship at Humboldt University in Berlin (2002–2007). He has been (inter alia) a visiting fellow/professor at the EHESS in Paris, Harvard University, the LSE, Sciences Po in Paris and the University of Oxford. His latest publications include: Tangled Transformations: Integrating Europe, Unifying Germany, 1985–1995 (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2024) (ed.); Project Europe: A History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2020) and The New Deal: A Global History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2016).
Anika Seemann is Associate Professor of Modern European History at the University of Bergen. Her work focuses on the aftermath of the Second World War in Europe, in particular the trials of wartime collaborators. Her monograph The Quislings on the Norwegian postwar reckoning (rettsoppgjøret) was published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. Anika holds a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge (2019). She has previously been a Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Social Law and Social Policy (2019-2024).
Please register through this link before September 22:
https://www.lyyti.in/Crises_Redux_Europe_in_a_Global_Context_8721
1.10. Tiedekulma Stage
2.-3.10. Small Hall (Pieni juhlasali), Main Building (Fabianinkatu 33), 4th floor.
You can reach the conference venues easily by public transport. It's a 10 minutes walk from the Central Railway Station. You can also take the trams 2, 4, or 9 to the stop Senaatintori.
If you have any questions or need more information concerning the conference, please do not hesitate to contact us: eurostorie-events[at]helsinki.fi.
We follow the Responsible interaction Guidelines in our event:
Principles of Responsible interaction in the University community
Be sensitive. The University community consists of diverse individuals. Do not, based on external appearances, make assumptions or generalisations about someone’s first language, origin, religion or lack thereof, beliefs, health, functional ability, gender, sexual orientation or other background. Respect everyone’s right to self-determination and non-determination, i.e., the right to decide and tell others how they identify and experience themselves.
Respect others and be kind. Respect other community members and their experiences. Respect other people’s boundaries. Don’t make offensive remarks or touch other people without their permission. If your actions cause offence, apologise and discuss the matter openly. Don’t judge other people for their erroneous behaviour, but do bring up the issue with them.
Be courageous, and give and receive feedback. Some of us have long been practising sensitivity towards others in our speech and behaviour, while others are just getting started. What counts the most are our mindset and willingness to be sensitive to others. Together we can build trust and a culture of open, courageous discussion, in which we can address issues and learn about sensitivity together. If someone uses an offensive term or describes a situation incorrectly, correct them gently. If you make a mistake, acknowledge it and apologise: “I’m sorry. Thank you for correcting me”. Try not to repeat the mistake.
We don’t accept harassment, racism, ableism or discrimination based on personal characteristics or background, such as gender, physical features, age, origin, nationality, language, religion or lack thereof, belief, opinions, political activity, trade union activity, family relations, health, disability or sexual orientation.
Call it out. If you observe harassment or other inappropriate behaviour, don’t be a bystander. Defend the person being harassed and tell the perpetrator that what’s happening is not okay.
If you experience or observe harassment, discrimination or inappropriate behaviour, contact a supervisor, teacher, event organiser, head of human resources, occupational safety delegate, shop steward or harassment contact person.
Harassment contact person for our event is to be announced.