Read the abstracts of the presentations here!
Wednesday 10.4.2019
Porthania, lecture hall PI
14:15-15:15 Keynote: Michael Hoeflich (University of Kansas): The sorrows of the legal émigré: with apologies to Goethe
Chair: Kaius Tuori
15:15-15:45 Coffee break
15:45-16:45 Session 1
Chair: Kaius Tuori
Monica García-Salmones (University of Helsinki): Hans Kelsen, international criminal law and paradoxes of forced émigré scholarship
Jacob Giltaij (University of Helsinki): Personal and academic considerations surrounding Lauterpachtʼs concept of human rights
Thursday 11.4.2019
Porthania, lecture hall Suomen Laki
09:30-10:30 Keynote: Dana Schmalz (University of Bremen): Judgment and authority: Hannah Arendt´s influence on contemporary refugee scholarship
Chair: Pamela Slotte
10.30-11:00 Coffee break
11:00-12:00 Session 2
Chair: Pamela Slotte
Jussi Backman (University of Helsinki / University of Jyväskylä): Retrieving the American Revolutionary treasure: Hannah Arendt’s political homecoming
Emilia Palonen (University of Helsinki): The Budapest School philosopher Agnes Heller: out of Europe and back again
13:00-14:00 Keynote: Richard Ned Lebow (King’s College London): German Jews and American Realism
Chair: Reetta Toivanen
14:00-15:30 Returning home? Contemporary Scholarship at Risk roundtable
Prosper Maguchu (Free University Amsterdam), Magdalena Kmak (University of Helsinki / Åbo Akademi), Mehrnoosh Farzamfar (University of Helsinki), Elisa Pascucci (University of Helsinki), Richard Ned Lebow (King’s College London), Ali Ali (University of Helsinki)
15:30-16:00 Coffee break
16:00-17:00 Keynote: Christina Eckes (University of Amsterdam): The Kelsenian foundations of EU law
Chair: Jacob Giltaij
17:00-18:00 Session 3
Chair: Jacob Giltaij
Adolfo Giuliani (University of Helsinki): Wiener realism and its transformations: Vienna, America and post-War Europe
Pedro Magalhães (University of Helsinki): An American scholar returns to Germany: Eric Voegelin in Munich (1958-1969)
Friday 12.4.2019
Porthania, lecture hall Suomen Laki
10:15-11:15 Keynote: Alfons Söllner (University of Chemnitz): Ernst Fraenkel: remigration and the Westernization of political culture in Germany
Chair: Magdalena Kmak
11:15-11:45 Coffee break
11:45-12:45 Session 4
Chair: Magdalena Kmak
Carol Bohmer (King’s College London): Refugee scholarship: then and now
Elena Cirkovic (University of Helsinki): The vanished returnee and the reimagining of post-war space: the changing scholarship on the constitutionalism and architecture of Bosnia and Herzegovina
Call for papers
The process of “refugee scholarship”, whereby scholars finding themselves in a conflict situation forcing them to flee their pre-existing academic context and thus having to adapt their scholarship to suit the new environment has been widely researched in the context of post-war scholarship and exile studies. Questions remain however relating both to the scientific change in the result of exile and studying the contemporary refugee scholarship. What happens when the conflict is over, and refugee scholarship “comes home”? And what are the new ways and methods of studying such scholarship in the context of the contemporary refugee and migration crisis?
The main instance of refugee scholarship coming home relatively successfully is the reinstatement after the Second World War of the work of those from the humanities and social sciences that had escaped the atrocities of the Nazi regime in Europe between 1933 and 1945. Post-War Europe saw a search for a new legal-political system: in this context, some refugee scholars had retained their authority among their peers despite being ousted, and some obtained a new-found audience for the works they had composed before and during the War. In their new academic environment, not all refugee scholars were successful in the process of adaptation: yet, those that were had been elementary in the foundation of novel fields of legal and political science particularly in the Anglo-American academic world. Arguably, these fields such as international relations could be classified as hybrids, containing scientific elements from both the continental European and Anglo-American academic traditions. To approach the return of refugee scholarship as a concept, the conference strives to link exile studies with contemporary refugee and migration studies in order to explore new methods of studying migration and its links with knowledge production. As such, it explores the possibility of historical parallels with the experiences of scholars as well as other asylum seekers on route or in Europe currently.
The conference revolves around the following set of questions in particular:
* In what measure does the status as (erstwhile) refugee scholars determine the scope of their influence?
* How does the refugee experience transform scholarship? Is it even possible to generalize here, or should this purely be determined on a case-by-case basis?
* What happens when a hybrid form of scholarship comes to be reinstated in its “old” academic and institutional context? Do both elements survive or is the hybrid stripped of its new context, retaining what was familiar for those that had stayed behind?
* What are the institutional, political, and societal consequences of a return of refugee scholarship to its former context?
* Is there a historically valid parallel present between historical and current instances of refugee crises?
* What is the contribution of mobility to knowledge in general, and scientific knowledge in particular?
The conference aims at a cross- and multidisciplinary perspective on the issues of refugee scholarship coming home and a new wave of scholars and intellectuals displaced by ongoing conflicts. Speakers and panelists are explicitly invited to engage with scientific disciplines other than their own, as well as taking into account both pre-Second World War and post-1945 historical continuities and discontinuities as well as contemporary discussions.
Confirmed keynote speakers include:
Michael Hoeflich, professor of law at the University of Kansas
Christina Eckes, professor of European law at the University of Amsterdam
Richard Ned Lebow, professor of international political theory at Kingʼs College London
Dana Schmalz, visiting professor at the University of Bremen
Alfons Söllner, professor emeritus at Technische Universität Chemnitz
The conference will be held on 10-12 April 2019. The deadline for abstracts (max. 500 words) is February 15th, 2019. The abstracts and further queries may be sent to Jacob Giltaij (jacob.giltaij@helsinki.fi), university researcher at the Academy of Finland Centre of Excellence for Law, Identity and the European Narratives (EUROSTORIE, eurostorie.org) of the University of Helsinki. The organizers will unfortunately be unable to assist with travel arrangements or costs.