Conference of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies

ICSID research fellow Fabian Burkhardt took part in the Fifth Annual Conference of the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies that was held in Munich on October 25-27, 2018. He presented his paper «On Presidents and Presidencies: Single-Country Studies and Comparative Authoritarianism, the Case of Russia».

Six years ago, in late 2012, the Graduate School for East and Southeast European Studies was launched by LMU Munich and the University of Regensburg. The priority has been to create a vibrant, interdisciplinary environment for successful doctoral projects and cutting-edge research on Eastern and Southeastern Europe, exploring the particularities of the countries, societies and cultures of this region. One of the basic premises has been a trans-regional perspective: East and Southeast Europe cannot be understood isolated but only in their interrelations with other world regions.

This year Conference was titled «STUDYING EAST AND SOUTHEAST EUROPE AS AREA STUDIES: PARADIGMS - THEMES - METHODS FOR THE 21ST CENTURY», and it was proposed to discuss a number of various questions such as:

How do well-established theoretical and methodological premises still fit within today’s challenges? In which geographical contexts must be considered nowadays research topics? And what consequences do transnational communication practices have on the production, acceptance and application of knowledge? It was decided that the current moment is a proper time to draw a substantive interim review and to discuss paradigms, themes and methods of studying East and Southeast Europe as Area Studies for the 21st century.