Early Career Researchers Workshops (ECW) are linked to the next EISA Pan-European Conference taking place in August.

ECWs are two-half days workshops organized by and for doctoral students and postdoctoral researchers who finished their PhD less than three years prior to the application deadline. Eight to twelve participants use the workshop to present and discuss their work with invited senior discussants. Early career workshops offer a collegial, supportive and empowering environment for PhD candidates and Early career scholars to present their work, test their ideas and research findings, and develop novel collaborative projects, networks and publications. The EISA supports each selected workshop with a budget of 4 000 EUR.

 All ECW participants are part of the PEC conference, therefore need to  register and pay the registration fee.

Early Career Workshops at PEC 2025: Programme

Geopolitics of AI Governance: Actors, Norms and Trends

 

25 August 2025 (afternoon session), 13:00-18:30
25 August 2025 (afternoon session), 13:00-18:30
12:00 – 13:00
Introductory lunch
13:00 – 13:15
Welcome speech by EISA
13:15 – 13:30
Workshop introduction by convenors
13:30 – 15:00
Norms and Practices

Sofie van der Maarel: “Between Urgency and Accountability: Lived Experiences of AI Governance in Security” Discussants: Anna Nadibaidze and Fabio Cristiano

Anna-Katharina Ferl: “The Limits of Legalization: International Law and the Regulation of Autonomous Weapons Systems”
Discussants: Fer Avar and Ingvild Bode

Anna Nadibaidze: “Beyond Oversight: The Role of Human Agency as a Regulatory Principle Across Responsible AI Initiatives”
Discussants: Elena Kavanagh and Fabio Cristiano

15:00 – 15:30
Coffee break
15:30 – 17:00
Actors and Approaches Part 1: Corporations

Robin Vanderborght: “Do Tech Leaders Dream of Artificial War? Exploring Vanguard Visions of Military AI and the New Pax Algorithmica”
Discussants: Sofie van der Maarel and Ingvild Bode

Fer Avar: “Co-Producing Military AI Permissibility: The Role of Private Actors in European Defense Governance”
Discussants: Ben Johnson and Fabio Cristiano

Ben Johnson: “Algorithmic Total War: Militarism, Mobilization, and the New Frontiers of Conflict”
Discussants: Anna-Katharina Ferl and Ingvild Bode

17:00 – 18:30
Trends in Global AI Governance

Elena Kavanagh: “Relational Futures: Indigenous Knowledge and Reimagining AI Governance”
Discussants: Robin Vanderborght and Ingvild Bode

Qiaochu Zhang: “Defining ‘Responsible AI’: Multiplicity and Consolidation in China’s AI Governance Narratives”
Discussants: Hengfeng Zhao and Fabio Cristiano

Hengfeng Zhao: “Boundary Work in Global AI Governance: China's Strategy to Reshape International Standards and Alliances”
Discussants: Qiaochu Zhang and Ingvild Bode

Time TBC
Workshop dinner with participants and senior discussants
26 August 2025 (morning session), 8:30-11:30
26 August 2025 (morning session), 8:30-11:30
08:30 – 10:00
Actors and Approaches Part II: International Institutions

Justinas Lingevičius: “Towards Agentic Security: Articulating Human-Technology Interaction in the Emerging EU AI Policy”
Discussants: Matilde Bro and Fabio Cristiano

Stefka Schmid “(In)Security at the Border: European AI Adoption for Situational Awareness”
Discussants: Justinas Lingevičius and Ingvild Bode

Matilde Bro: “The Inner Geopolitical Complexities of Negotiating AI: A Concept for Studying Narratives, Logics and Instruments of Power in Diplomatic Negotiations”
Discussants: Stefka Schmid and Fabio Cristiano

10:00 – 10:30
Coffee break
10:30 – 11:30
Training session and discussion about the next steps

Navigating Sovereignty: States as Economic Agents in Fragmenting World Order(s)

 

25 August 2025 (afternoon session), 13:00-18:30
25 August 2025 (afternoon session), 13:00-18:30
13:00 - 13:15
Welcome Speech by EISA
13:15 - 13:30
Workshop introductions
13:30 - 15:00
Panel 1 : Industrial policy

Helena Drdlová: Possibilities and limitations of industrial policy at the Central and Eastern European (CEE) integrated periphery

Phillip Nock: Daring more state capitalism? On the changing role of the state in German economic and industrial policy (2018-2024)

Itsane Allende: Cuban peripheral agency after neoliberalism: SouthSouth industrial policy and overlapping orders

15:00 - 15:30
Coffee break
15:30 - 17:00
Panel 2 : Historical structuralism

Matias Castrén: Why do states sometimes prioritise sovereignty over economic gains, and vice versa?

Martin Fischer: Countering Dollar Dependency: France’s Drive for European Monetary Integration

Connor Clery: Scalar order(ing): transnational, non-state and societal contributions to sovereignty

17:00 - 18:30
Panel 3 : Global governance

Mingchun Xu: The BRICS+ In A Fragmented World Order

Konsta Kotilainen: Overcoming Polycrisis and Geoeconomic Fragmentation through an International Clearing Union: An Analysis of Expert Assessments

Petr Svatoň: Development Strategies in a Post-WTO World: New Constraints and Opportunities

20:00
Workshop dinner
26 August 2025 (morning session), 8:30-11:30
26 August 2025 (morning session), 8:30-11:30
08:30 - 10:00
Panel 4 : States and competition

Eugenio Sánchez: State-Business Ties as a Force Multiplier in Great Power Competition: Explaining the Rise of US Industrial Policy in Semiconductors (2012-2025)

You Wang: East’s Triumph? Domestic Politics and Capability of Economic Statecraft

Melike Bozkurt: Contesting hegemony: The role of geopolitical ambitions for the (mis)alignments between economic statecraft and industrial policy

10:00 - 10:30
Coffee break
10:30 - 11:30
Workshop conclusion

Dangerous Intimacies: Race, Coloniality, and Materiality in Global Politics

 

25 August 2025 (afternoon session), 12:00-18:30
25 August 2025 (afternoon session), 12:00-18:30
12:00 - 13:00
Workshop Lunch
13:00 - 13:15
Welcome Speech by EISA
13:15 - 13:30
Workshop introductions
13:30 - 15:00
Panel 1
Chair: Italo Brandimarte
Discussant: Dr Farai Chipato

Presenters:
Shambhawi Tripathi: Roots of Resistance: Trees as Eco-Political Protagonists Against Colonial and Capitalist Histories
Tarsis Brito: Becoming Property: (Dis)possession and the Making of International Order
Sharazad Odeh: The Smoking Gun: The Circulation of Weapons and the Creation of New Borders and Politics in Israel-Palestine

15:00 - 15:30
Coffee break
15:30 - 17:00
Panel 2
Chair: Tarsis Brito
Discussant: Prof Mark Salter

Presenters:
Georgia Yaritji Mansell: Quantum Imaginaries and the Politics of (Im)Materiality
Caio Simoneti: Groundwork of the Robophysics of Morals: Autonomy, Reason and Moral Subjectivity in Immanuel Kant and Autonomous Weapons
Niklas Kehrle: Fabricating Visibility: The Reproduction of Capitalist Social Relations in and through Surveillance

17:00 - 18:30
Panel 3
Chair: Italo Brandimarte
Discussant: Dr Farai Chipato

Presenters:
Meena Masood: Humanitarian ‘Vulnerability’ Categories, ‘Vulnerability’ Forms, and ‘Vulnerability’ Imaginaries in Greece: Making ‘the Vulnerable’
Leah de Haan: Queer intimate partner- and domestic violence through the lens ofassemblages: tracing materiality, (body)parts and the contesting of bodily autonomy in violent racialized heteropatriarchal orders
Franca Kappes: Epistemic Regimes of Surprise and Uncertainty & the Commercialisation of the Resilience Paradigm in NEOM City

20:00
Workshop dinner (Location TBD)
26 August 2025 (morning session), 8:30-11:30
26 August 2025 (morning session), 8:30-11:30
08:30 - 10:00
Panel 4
Chair: Tarsis Brito
Discussant: Prof Mark Salter

Presenters:
Italo Brandimarte: The Ecological Way of War: The Coloniality of Sustainable Violence
Julia Maria Charlotte Feine: The Crisis Will Fix Sweden? Broken Fantasies and the Power of Solidarity in the Aftermath of Extreme Forest Fires
Aksel Hvid: Taking difference seriously: New Materialist and Postcolonial approaches to representation

10:00 - 10:30
Coffee break
10:30 - 11:30
Open discussion
Senior discussants’ reflections (20 mins):
Dr Farai Chipato
Prof Mark Salter

+ Broader discussion on next steps (40 mins)

ECW 2025 will be organized before EISA PEC 2025 conference, on 25-26 August 2025, in Bologna, Italy.

IMPORTANT DATES

Timeline

5 February 2025

Call for Early Career Workshop Proposals

25 March 2025

Deadline for applications

24 March 2025

Deadline for EISA PEC Mobility Funds

28 March 2025

Workshops acceptance emails sent

31 March 2025

Acceptance of the grant by convenors

2 April 2025

Public announcement of succesful workshops

2 April 2025

Call for participants by organisers

28 April 2025

Results from call for papers

15 May 2025

Registration deadline

1 July 2025

Workshop programmes published

How to participate:

Call for participants is closed.