2014-11-13

Dimitris Dalakoglou, University of Sussex, gives a talk for the Arrival Cities COMPAS Seminar Series. In 2010, it was reported that out of the 510 border guards employed in the country, 473 were, in fact, serving in Athens. Indeed, deployment of border guards in cities has become standard practice these days; for example, in the summer of 2013 UKBA organized a large-scale operation in London’s underground stations stopping and checking migrants and people of migratory origin. This urbanisation of security and military techniques developed supposedly to protect the borders of a nation-state from a military attack is just part of a wider process which reconfigures the social class divisions in Western European metropolises. This new political economy which often passes over the bodies and lives of non-Western migrants, at the time of crisis, finds one of its major materialisations in the centre of Athens along the Greek part of the common European borders. This paper, drawing from an 18-month long ethnography in Athens, will attempt to set a light to the urban everydayness that follows the current financial crisis.

The Oxford Community Collection Model brings together online crowdsourcing with personal, face-to-face interaction. It has been used successfully in a range of ways from collating Anglo-Saxon teaching resources to memories of WW1. Dr Ylva Berglund Prytz explains the origins, the concept behind and success stories of the Oxford Community Collection model. In particular she refers to The Great War Archive and Europeana 1914-1918. Lastly, she explains how the team at RunCoCo (IT Services) can help University staff in leading and curating their own community collections.

Karen Throsby, Leeds University, gives a talk for the Michaelmas term UBVO seminar series.

Peter Quayle, European Bank for Reconstruction & Development & Uni Notre Dame, London Law Centre - 13 November 2014

Professor Loukas Tsoukalis, Professor of European Integration at the University of Athens, gives the 2014 Cyril Foster Lecture. Professor Loukas Tsoukalis, is also the President of the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy (ELIAMEP), and Visiting Professor at King’s College, London and the College of Europe, Bruges. The transformation of Western Europe during the second half of the twentieth century was a remarkable success story, and regional integration was part and parcel of it. After the collapse of the Soviet empire, Pax Europaea gradually spread to the eastern part of the continent. The European project became much bigger, more intrusive and less inclusive, while external competition intensified in a rapidly globalising world. And then, a big international financial crisis transformed itself into an existential crisis of the European currency union. Was the euro a terrible mistake? And what lessons can be drawn from the way Europe has so far (mis)managed the crisis? Centrifugal forces have been growing between and within countries. Trust is low. Economic factors often push for more integration, but politics resists. Meanwhile, Europe’s ‘soft power’ is too weak to deal with an increasingly unstable neighbourhood, not to mention global challenges. Or, does collective weakness have more to do with internal divisions? More differentiation and flexibility will be necessary to deal with heterogeneity and growing divergence within the EU, although this may not stop the UK from exiting. Has European integration reached the end of the road, and if so, what would be the implications for peace and prosperity in Europe and beyond? And what are the pre-conditions for a new European grand bargain?