Austria
In collaboration with
Institute for Human Sciences
The Institute for Human Sciences / Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM) is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities and social sciences. Since its foundation in 1982, it has hosted more than 1500 scholars, journalists and translators from all over the world. Many of the Institute’s Permanent and Visiting Fellows are regular contributors to Eurozine or its focal points Eurasia in Global Dialogue and Ukraine in European Dialogue (see below).
Website: www.iwm.at
Twitter: @IWM_Vienna
Youtube: IWMVienna
Articles
Writing open letters of protest, quoting Václav Havel, led to incarceration for a young Chinese woman. How deep do comparisons between communist China today and Czechoslovakia of the 1970s and 1980s run? And what can Jan Patočka’s thoughts on evading passivity tell us about the compulsion for dissident acts?
Ukraine’s EU candidacy has brought new momentum to an EU enlargement process suffering from a major crisis of credibility. But reservations towards enlargement run deep. The EU should admit this and propose an interim goal that still offers candidate countries genuine incentive for reform.
The war crimes charges brought by the ICC against Putin are a breakthrough. But built-in safeguards of national interest, combined with an incomplete patchwork of mechanisms and jurisdictions, mean a long way ahead before Russia is prosecuted under international law for the crime of aggression.
Women forced to leave their homes during war face gender specific dangers. Mobile phones and refugee-targeted apps can be either a lifeline or an unforeseen trap, associated with rape and trafficking. How could the West’s innovative digital response to sexual health and exploitation be improved?
Focal points
Inspired by a lecture that Clifford Geertz delivered in 1995 at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna, this focal point engages with ‘deep diversity’, ‘a sense of dispersion, of particularity, of complexity and of uncenteredness’ rather than unified world order. It follows the launch of a research programme of the same name at the institute in January 2023.
Post-revolutionary Ukrainian society displays a unique mix of hope, enthusiasm, social creativity, collective trauma of war, radicalism and disillusionment. With the Maidan becoming history, the focal point ‘Ukraine in European Dialogue’ explores the new challenges facing the young democracy, its place in Europe, and the lessons it might offer for the future of the European project.
Projects and publications
