LONDON’S GLOBAL UNIVERSITY
Provisional programme for the international, interdisciplinary research workshop
Popular Geopolitics in Russia and Post-Soviet Eastern Europe
Hosted by the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies, 19–20 February 2015
PLEASE NOTE THAT ATTENDANCE AT THIS EVENT IS RESTRICTED TO PRESENTERS ONLY
but for information about the workshop outcomes please contact Joanna Szostek at j.szostek@ucl.ac.uk
Thursday 19 February
09:30 – 10:00
Arrival, tea/coffee
10:00 – 10:15
A word of welcome from Professor Wendy Bracewell, curator of the Mellon Programme at
UCL-SSEES
10:15 – 11:00
Professor David Newman (Ben-Gurion University)
‘Popular geopolitics, critical geopolitics and simply geopolitics: The renaissance of a
discipline’
Discussant: Professor Dr Martin Müller
11:00 – 11:45
Professor Doug Blum (Providence College)
‘Popular geopolitics and culture in Kazakhstan’
Discussant: Professor Robert Saunders
11:45 – 12:30
Karena Avedissian (University of Birmingham)
‘Krasnodar Cossacks: Vanguard of Russian conservative-patriotic discourse’
Discussant: Professor Magnus Marsden
12:30 – 13:30
Buffet lunch
13:30 – 14:15
Dr Mikhail Suslov (Uppsala University)
‘“Crimea is ours!” Russian popular geopolitics in the new media age’
Discussant: Professor Alexander Osipian
14:15 – 15:00
Professor Alexander Osipian (Kramatorsk Institute of Economics and Humanities)
‘Domestication of imported geopolitical narratives: How popular perception of “the West” was
shaped by Russia in rebellious Donbas in 2014’
Discussant: Dr Joanna Szostek
15:00 – 15:15
Tea/coffee break
15:15 – 16:00
Dr Dariya Orlova (National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy)
‘‘Europe’ in Ukrainian public discourse: a normative model and the desired ‘Other’’
Discussant: Dr Nelly Bekus
This workshop is generously supported by
16:00 – 16:45
Dr Nelly Bekus (University of Exeter)
‘Constructed “Otherness”? Poland and the geopolitics of contested Belarusian identity’
Discussant: Dr Dariya Orlova
Friday 20 February
09:30 – 10:15
Professor Robert A. Saunders (Farmingdale State College) and Dr Vlad Strukov (University of
Leeds)
‘The popular geopolitics feedback loop: Thinking beyond the ‘Russia versus the West’
paradigm’
Discussant: Professor David Newman
10:15 – 11:00
Dr Joanna Szostek (UCL-SSEES)
‘News media choices and beliefs about the West among Russian university students’
Discussant: Dr Vlad Strukov
11:00 – 11:15
Tea/coffee break
11:15 – 12:00
Dr Valeria Kasamara (Higher School of Economics)
‘Soft power or hard power: Russian students’ choice’
Discussant: Professor Ellen Mickiewicz
12:00 – 12:45
Professor Ellen Mickiewicz (Duke University)
‘The dilemma of risk in trust among Russia’s future leaders’
Discussant: Dr Valeria Kasamara
12:45 – 13:30
Buffet lunch
13:30 – 14:15
Professor Dr Martin Müller (University of Zürich)
‘Educating geopolitical subjects in Russia: consecration, subject-making, neuropolitics’
Discussant: Dr Mikhail Suslov
14:15 – 15:00
Professor Magnus Marsden (University of Sussex), Dr David Henig (University of Kent) and
Dr Diana Ibañez-Tirado (SOAS)
‘Towards an anthropology of diplomacy: everyday modes of diplomacy within Afghan trading
networks in Ukraine and Russia’
Discussant: Dr Jason Dittmer
15:00 – 15:15
Tea/coffee break
15:15 – 16:00
Michael Erdman (SOAS)
‘Neo-Dhimmi in an age of neo-Ottomanism: Religious difference and Gagauz perceptions of
Turkish foreign policy under the AKP’
Discussant: Professor Doug Blum
16:00 – 16:45
Liene Ozoliņa-Fitzgerald (LSE)
‘The Tyrannies of Intimacy: Notes on neo-liberal political subjectivity formation in Latvia’
Discussant: Dr Diana Ibañez-Tirado
16:45 – 17:30
Concluding remarks and next steps
This workshop is generously supported by