"Predictable Futures? On the Impact of Fear and Insecurity in the Baltic Sea Region" - IFZO Jahreskonferenz

This year's IFZO annual conference focuses on questions of fear, uncertainty, and insecurity in the future of the Baltic Sea Region.

The Baltic Sea region witnesses its fair share of transformations and monumental turning points, and the past years have brought upon some truly unexpected new challenges and external shocks. In addition, the dramatic nature of already recognised challenges is becoming more and more apparent to the common consciousness. Deep insecurity has permeated fields diverse as energy, defence, economic, social and health policy. These developments have illuminated hard questions related to climate crises, the stability of democracy and the integrity of the state. Analysts and policymakers have differently assessed the likelihood of Russia’s fullscale war against Ukraine or the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic and the consequences of such predicaments. The sheer magnitude of these events poses profound questions about the future trajectories of the Baltic Sea region, thus prompting greater societal insecurity and fear of the unknown.

These fears, as well as the related potential for unrest and tensions, represent a major challenge both for political and economic decision-makers. In order to obtain valuable policy prescriptions, lawmakers have increasingly turned to the expertise produced by the scientific community. Prediction-making, however, can be a rather perilous endeavour even for researchers, who by nature have to remain uncertain about their scientifically-grounded findings. That stated, a good grasp and empirical analysis of past events may still help in making future forecasts more reliable and improve early-warning mechanisms.

The Interdisciplinary Centre for Baltic Sea Region Research (IFZO) at the University of Greifswald combines research competencies on the Baltic Sea region and offers an innovative research environment.

In the IFZO research network “Fragmented Transformations. Perceptions, Constructions, Constitutions of a Region in Transition”, seven interdisciplinary research groups identify and study transformation processes relating to new understandings of cultural heritage, the energy transition, the change of security architecture, the emergence of new nationalisms, sustainability transformation and land use in the Baltic Sea Region.

Venue: Pomeranian State Museum, Rakower Straße 9

7 June 2023
8.00 – 17.00 REGISTRATION
9.30 – 10.00 WELCOME & INTRODUCTION
RECTOR/DEAN/SPEAKER
 

10.00 – 11.30 PANEL 1: IMAGINARY FUTURES
Chair: Alexander Drost (Greifswald)
Oliver Aas (Ithaca): Imaginaries of environmentally/sustainable futures
Aditya Ranjan (New Delhi): Russia-Ukraine Military Confrontation, Changing Geopolitical Context and the Environmental Security Cooperation Dilemma in the Baltic Sea Region
Marta Skorek (Gdansk): Ecocultural identity as an entry point to reimagining Balticness
Discussant: Wibke Müller (Greifswald)

11.30 – 13.00 LUNCH & POSTER SESSIONS

13.00 – 14.30 PANEL 2: FUTURE RURAL SPACES
Chair: N. N.

Steffen Fleßa (Greifswald): Security is not free-of-charge! General reflections and application in healthcare
Frauke Richter-Wilde and Daniel Schiller (Greifswald): Municipal Finance in Crisis: Consequences for Rural Areas
Christine Tamásy and Clemens Lisdat (Greifswald): Transformative Crisis: Perspectives on Rurality

14.30 – 15.00 COFFEE BREAK

15.00 – 16.30 KEYNOTE
Pia-Johanna Schweizer (Potsdam): Global Challenges and local solutions? Participatory risk governance for systemic transformations towards sustainability and resilience

16.30 – 17.00 COFFEE BREAK

17.00 – 19.00 ROUNDTABLE „Future of the Baltic Sea Region“, Politics and Academia in Dialogue
Moderator: Ilkka Ahtiainen (Editor in Chief at MTV Oy (News), Finland)
Panellists: Politicians and Academics tba

19.00 – 21.00 RECEPTION

8 June 2023
8.00 – 15.00 REGISTRATION

9.00 – 11.00 PANEL 3: LANGUAGE POLICY AND SOCIO-LINGUISTIC APPROACHES WITH FOCUS ON BALTIC STATES
Chair: Marko Pantermöller (Greifswald)

Andrejs Veisbergs (Riga): The Changing Latvian Language: Sign of Progress and Source of Fear
Kerttu Rozenvalde (Tartu): Is Latvian under threat? The role of fear in Latvian higher education language policy
Kadri Koreinik (Tartu): Estonian language policies in the last 30+ years: the reactions to and the extensions of Soviet policies and beyond?
Discussants: Yvonne Bindrim & Kaspars Zalāns (Greifswald)

11.00 – 11.30 COFFEE BREAK

11.30 – 13.00 PANEL 4: THE ENERGY TRILEMMA IN TIMES OF CRISIS AND (ENERGY) TRANSFORMATION
Chair: Mary Keogh (Greifswald)

Bartosz Sobik (Warsaw): Energy transition in times of energy crisis – challenges for Poland, Germany and Baltic Sea Region
Vineta Kleinberga (Riga) and Judith Kärn (Greifswald): Discussing pathways to the future in energy: developing an approach for assessing the discursive environment of energy security, energy equity and
environmental sustainability in the BSR
Mary Keogh and Paul Kirschstein (both Greifswald): Negotiating Indigenous pasts in the future of renewable energy sources
Vasantha Kalal (New Delhi): „Impact of National Identity on Framing Energy Policy of Baltic States”

13.00 – 14.00 LUNCH & POSTER SESSIONS

14.00 – 15.30 PANEL 5: LONG SHADOWS OF THE PAST: DEALING WITH HISTORY IN ARTS
Chair: Antje Kempe (Greifswald)

Michael Custodis (Münster): Heroic Narratives and Political Intentions. German Perspectives on Norwegian Music after 1940
Tomasz Kitlinski (Berlin): The Haunted and Hostipitable Eastern Europe: Developing a New History in the Arts
Marie-Theres Federhofer (Tromsø): Messy Episodes. Indigenous countersigns in Ludwig Choris’s Diary and Ethnographic Portraits
Discussant: N. N.

15.30 – 16.00 COFFEE BREAK

16.00 – 17.30 PANEL 6: RUSSIAN CIVIL OPPOSITION
Chair: Natalia Iost (Greifswald)

Bogdan Romanov and Polina Malakhova (Tartu): Transnational activists’ identities in the field of human rights protection
Martina Zagni (Tartu): War Citizens and War Opponents. Critical Conscience in the poetry of the Soviet Thaw and of Contemporary Russia
Elena Pavlova (Tartu): Russian anti-war academics: the hidden scripts of a community in between
Natalia Kovyliaeva (Tartu): Between Horror and Hope: Anti-War Feminist Resistance Performances and Strategies of Mobilizations in and outside of Putin's Russia

17.30 – 18.00 WRAPPING UP & FAREWELL


Vorläufiges Konferenzprogramm (PDF)

Bei Fragen kontaktieren Sie uns bitte unter ifzouni-greifswaldde.

Organisator

  • IFZO

    Interdisziplinäres Forschungszentrum Ostseeraum (IFZO)

Veranstaltungsort

  • Pommersches Landesmuseum
    Rakower Straße 9
    17489 Greifswald
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