The Jubilee ICSID Conference
The 10th Jubilee ICSID Conference “Political Economy in a Changing World” for the second year running was successfully held online on June 7-10. This time the event was particularly big so the Conference organizers had to include extra day to accommodate all papers.
The event united both permanent participants and new researchers from Russia, the USA, Germany, Japan, Spain, Finland, Poland and the United Kingdom. The main theme of the Conference was political economy in changing world. Presented papers addressed different aspects of this research issue such as authoritarian regimes, political elites, gender norms, populism, media and fake news and also the COVID-19 pandemic. Despite the constraints of online format all participants held lively discussion in the chat room. This way speakers could recieve even more feedback from their colleagues.
Every year the ICISD activities attract more and more scholars. In some of the presented papers there were references to the ICSID databases and also the ICSID team members articles.
Some participants shared their opinion on the Conference.
Alexander Limban (FUB):
Even in the times of the pandemic and the Zoom fatigue, ICSID conference remains an event a researcher interested in Russian politics and, more generally, political economy of development, should not miss. This year's conference offered an exciting collecting of very interesting contributions covering a broad array of topics, and remained a place of very vivid discussions and exchange. The presentations were both empirically rich and methodologically nuanced, and also highly innovative - I learned a lot from this year's conference!
Sarah Sokhey (Colorado University):
I'm consistently impressed at how strong the attendance & participation norms are at this conference! Thank you everyone!
Nikita Khohlov (HSE University):
The ICSID conference is one of the most prominent academic events in Russia dedicated to the political economy and related fields. This is an excellent opportunity to learn about cutting-edge research by leading experts. The range of topics from governance, state and society to identity, culture and historical legac ies helped me to gain knowledge the sub-fields of political economy which are new for me, as well as broaden my understanding of familiar sub-fields. In general, the ICSID conference was organised at the highest level and encouraged me to submit my paper to it in the next year.
Arseniy Samsonov (UCLA):
The ICSID conference brings together researchers who study various topics in Political Economy. This year, it featured big names alongside promising junior faculty and graduate students. The papers' topics ranged from Development to Public Opinion. Most projects analyzed experimental data. The discussants gave excellent reviews and recommendations. Participation in the Conference will help me in my future research, especially in empirical projects. Being from Russia and having done my undergraduate at HSE, I am proud that my country and my undergraduate school host such a great conference.
Masatomo Torikai (Keio University):
I would like to thank all of the staff in the institute who worked hard for organizing this wonderful conference. It is my first time participating in this conference, but I am sure that this is one of the best conferences I have ever joined. Although all of the presentations were provided virtually, the audience actively responded to the presentations, including mine. All of the comments I received were critical and beneficial for improving the paper. Plus, it was easy to copy and paste the comments into my digital notebook. I think this is huge merit of the online conference. However, we could not have personal chats with participants. For scholars who live in neither Russia nor the US, like me, this conference is an indispensable opportunity for creating networks with numerous specialists of Russian politics all over the world. I strongly hope that the participants could meet in person at the next conference.