The Future of Europe: Looking back & looking forward

The 2022 conference, held on 3-5 March, was hosted at the Munk School of Global Affairs & Public Policy in a hybrid in-person/remote conference model. The theme of the 2022 conference was “The Future of Europe: Looking back & looking forward.” 

As we think about what a post-pandemic Europe may look like politically, socially, and economically, we can also examine Europe’s historical challenges and the ways in which it has envisioned its fate from past to present. The continent has faced tribulations within and beyond its real or imagined borders before, and will continue to do so as it forges ahead. The CERES GSU invited the participation of all graduate students who interested in critical examinations of the past and to the future of the regions we broadly term Europe, Russia, and Eurasia.

Through this conference, CERES offered a combination of academic rigour and professional training. The conference featured a guest keynote presentation from a leading scholar and/or practitioner. We also offered professional development workshops that focused on bridging the boundaries between academic and professional career paths alongside several social events.

2022 Keynote Speaker: Cathie Jo Martin

Cathie Jo Martin is professor of Political Science at Boston University. Her book with Duane Swank, The Political Construction of Business Interests (Cambridge 2012) received the APSA Politics and History book award. In 2013-2014, she co-chaired with Jane Mansbridge an APSA presidential task force on political negotiation, which produced Negotiating Agreement in Politics (Brookings 2015). Martin is also author of Stuck in Neutral: Business and the Politics of Human Capital Investment Policy (Princeton 2000), Shifting the Burden: the Struggle over Growth and Corporate Taxation (Chicago 1991), and articles in the American Political Science ReviewWorld PoliticsBritish Journal of Political ScienceComparative Political Studies and Socio-Economic Review among others. Martin has held fellowships at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Russell Sage Foundation, Boston University Center for the Humanities and University of Copenhagen. She has received grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, German Marshall Fund, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Danish Social Science Research Council, Boston University Hariri Institute for Computing and National Science Foundation. She is the former chair of the Council for European Studies and former director of the Boston University Center for the Study of Europe. She received her Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1987 and an honorary doctorate from the University of Southern Denmark in October 2019. Martin’s current book project explores how British and Danish authors contribute to the deep cultural roots of education reform.

2021-2022 Graduate Conference Committee

  • Jessi Gilchrist, Chair
  • Aviva Gomes-Bhatt, Communications & Advertising Coordinator
  • Tanja Velickovic, Program Coordinator
  • Sasha Slobodov, First Year Representative
  • Maseeh Dlir, Cory Osmond, John Weston, Peer Reviewers