Abstract:
The aftermath of World War II is often invoked as the birth moment of a new international order. From the moral and physical ruins of Europe, a vision took shape – for Europe, for international cooperation, for a certain kind of world order. In this workshop we will use that historical moment to explore a question as pressing today as it was then: how are futures made, and by whom?
Building the postwar order involved more than creating institutions. International organizations deployed psychiatrists and social workers to rehabilitate the millions of Displaced Persons stranded across Europe – by forming them into particular kinds of subjects: adaptable, productive, future-oriented.
Drawing on research into psychosocial rehabilitation programs for Holocaust survivors, the talk first traces how humanitarian and psychiatric interventions operated at the intersection of care and governance. Survivors were not only to be healed; they were to be formed into citizens fit for a new order, a new future.
The session is structured in two parts. The first offers a historical analysis of how futures were made after the Holocaust. These insights will provide the groundwork for an interactive part that invites participants into a guided discussion and exercise. In 1945, futures were shaped at the intersection of care and governance. Who is shaping futures today? Through what means? And what alternatives might we envision?
The aim is not to draw lessons from history, but to use 1945 as a lens through which we discuss the role of imagination and vision in governance and politics.
Bio:
Dr. Stella Frei is a historian and international affairs professional based in Berlin. She studied at the University of Hamburg and Smith College and holds a PhD from Justus Liebig University Giessen. She has worked in journalism and communications, and with senior global leaders at the Robert Bosch Academy on questions of multilateralism and global governance. She is the author of the award-winning Healing Holocaust Survivors: Politics of Psychological Rehabilitation in Postwar Europe (De Gruyter, 2025). Her current work sits at the intersection of history, political psychology, and international affairs — exploring how societies navigate rupture, how institutions respond to systemic transformation, and what moments of profound transition ask of political imagination and governance.
Time: 15:00-16:30, Monday 25.5.
Location: P673, Porthania, University of Helsinki (Yliopistonkatu 3)
Link for online participation: