Trump’s foreign policy fuels Putin’s agenda, blaming Ukraine for its own invasion while excusing Russian aggression. His admiration for strongmen and disregard for democratic alliances threaten global stability. This isn’t diplomacy, it’s a roadmap to authoritarian dominance via cowboy diplomacy, argues Chris Kostov.
In a hot take on the second Trump presidency, Ulf Brunnbauer sees a fundamental ideological shift in US foreign policy, away from democratic values and towards fascism combined with a Putin-style vision of the world.
Jan Hornát and Mélanie Sadozaï discuss the intersections, complementarities, and frictions between area studies and international relations (IR), tracing the theoretical and empirical synergies that interdisciplinarity can generate
Discover Ruth Ferrero-Turrión’s insights on the EU’s response to migration, legitimacy, and geopolitical challenges. Can the Union overcome its “polycrisis” and embrace a unified future?
Mélanie Sadozaï examines how the 2024 LISER conference on “disruptive borderlands” highlighted borders as sites of both crisis and resilience, openness and restriction, urging a shift towards inclusive, cross-border cooperation in policy.
What can multiscalar area studies tell us about the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world? Read more in this report
Part of the Law and Justice (PiS) government’s soft power agenda, this recent exhibition features artworks that could undermine its efforts to promote a singular, martyrdom-focused politics of history and national identity.
Will “the cradle of neoliberalism” also become its grave, as the new President of Chile promises? Igor Stipić, doctoral researcher at the Leibniz ScienceCampus, explores the radical compromises Gabriel Borić might need to make as he seeks to guide a society marked by a decade of protests towards democratic stability and fairness.
How are life writing studies positioned in relation to the spatial, transnational and global turns in cultural studies and area studies? Tamara Heger and Verena Baier discuss these questions in their workshop report.
How can binaries be effectively unbuilt? How does this impact constructions of identity, conceptual frameworks and scholarly fields? These are some questions explored by the graduate researcher team behind the workshop “Unbuilding binaries”