We are delighted to invite you to the 18th EISA Pan-European Conference on International Relations (PEC), to be held at the University of Bologna, 25-29 August 2025.

Our flagship event will take place in the oldest university in Europe, in a country with a lively tradition of International Relations. As per our tradition, PEC 2025 will be organized in thematic sections, both standing and new ones, and will welcome colleagues from a diversity of disciplines from Europe and beyond. Plenary sessions will highlight key issues in current debates in international relations, with leadings experts from our association. We will also offer opportunities through our Early Career Workshops, social events, and professional development activities to nurture our community. In order to make PEC 2025 more inclusive, we will provide help for those in financial need to attend through our increased Mobility Fund. Over and above, we are committed to making the 18th edition of our conference as diverse and rewarding as possible, where ideas can be formulated, debated, criticized, shaped and sharpened through mutual respect and understanding. It is this spirit which has made EISA’s Pan-European Conferences the leading annual event in International Relations in Europe and we are looking forward to keeping this up in Bologna!

MAIN PLENARY

Title: Broken, disordered, or what? Making sense of contemporary world politics

Date: 26 August
Time: 13:00-14:30
Room: Aula B
Building: Belmeloro

Participants

Chair: Giovanni Agostinis, UNIBO
Chair: Michela Ceccorulli, UNIBO
Plenary Speaker: Thomas Tieku, UWO
Plenary Speaker: Stefano Guzzini, EUI
Plenary Speaker: Sonia Lucarelli, UNIBO
Plenary Speaker: Meera Sabaratnam, University of Oxford
Plenary Speaker: Chih-yu Shih, Tongji University

Plenary Description:

The feeling that something has gone irremediably lost in our understanding of international politics is palpable. The unthinkable is before our eyes, and predictions are harder to make. Long-lasting sources of international order have turned into drivers of disorder. The most basic shared normative understandings are under attack, undermining the core of rules-based multilateralism. Re-arming and tariff wars emerge as prominent strategies to cope with uncertainty. Some may say nothing is surprising about what is happening: the international “order” has never been more than the embodiment of power asymmetries, and old power politics is back. Others perceive the current scenario as the fall of a dystopian representation of an ordered system that never was. Conventional theoretical frameworks and concepts have regained prominence, while novel discourses have emerged to interpret the evolving dynamics of contemporary world politics. However, the complexity of the current scenario poses a daunting challenge to our analytical capabilities, defying easy conceptualization and fostering fragmentation in the way we understand international and transnational phenomena. The objective of this roundtable is twofold: to shed light on the characteristics of contemporary world politics and to reflect on the role of International Relations (IR) theory in providing conceptual tools to make sense of it.

SEMI-PLENARY 1

Title: Politics of Witnessing

Date: 26 August
Time: 15:00-16:30
Room: Aula B
Building: Belmeloro

Participants

Chair: Georgios Glouftsios, University of Trento
Plenary Speaker: Claudia Aradau, King’s College London
Plenary Speaker: Martina Tazzioli, University of Bologna
Plenary Speaker: Gitte de Plessis, Tampere University
Plenary Speaker: Jakub Zahóra, Charles University Prague

Plenary Description:

Witnessing violence, destruction and decay can have a paralyzing and depoliticizing effect. Media reports of war, climate change or humanitarian crises can trigger affective reactions like suppression or denial. Furthermore, the active production of ignorance and non-knowledge, for example on migration or climate change, challenges effective political contestation. In this semi-plenary, we discuss the possibility of promoting witnessing as a form of political action, as well as reflect upon methodologies that would allow us to bear witness. How can we create new ‘sense-abilities’ to make forms of (slow) violence visible that would otherwise remain hidden? How can witnessing enable new forms of care and solidarity? What forms of political mobilization and organization can emerge around assemblages and practices of witnessing?

SEMI-PLENARY 2

Title: Politics of Repair

Date: 26 August
Time: 15:00-16:30
Room: Aula A
Building: Belmeloro

Participants

Chair: Delf Rothe, Institute for Peace Research and Security Policy at the University of Hamburg
Plenary Speaker: Nathaniel O’Grady, University of Manchester
Plenary Speaker: Tasniem Anwar, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam
Plenary Speaker: Debbie Lisle, Queen’s University Belfast
Plenary Speaker: Mariam Salehi, Free University Berlin

Plenary Description:

In this semi-plenary, we explore practices and projects that – while acknowledging that there is no panacea for existing global challenges – seek to reform, rework, or reorder international politics and governance in the wake of the current disorder. Reparative accounts of international relations must account for the physical damage and loss brought about by crises but also for affects, trauma and identity loss. Repair, in this sense, means establishing and maintaining relations that address the fragility of our and others’ worlds. How can we reinvent and reappropriate the toolbox of traditional IR approaches, such as (neo-)realism, constructivism and institutionalism, for a politics of repair? How can we decolonize and provincialize international relations through relational Indigenous ontologies? Or how can we mobilize feminist theories to provide a new normative foundation for the international order? What forms of repair can be observed empirically from local grassroot movements to international attempts at reforming the UN? What is the role of reparative justice and accountability mechanisms in this context?

C-IN
Prague Congress Centre
5. kvetna 65
140 21 Prague 4
Czech Republic
Tel.: +420 296 219 600
Website: www.c-in.eu