Join us for an inspiring exploration of the intersection between technology and the humanities at the Digital Humanities Conference. This event brings together scholars, researchers, and innovators to discuss how digital tools and methods are transforming the study of human culture and history. From data visualization to text analysis, the conference will showcase cutting-edge projects that bridge the past with the future, offering new insights into our shared heritage. Engage in thought-provoking discussions, workshops, and presentations that highlight the potential of digital humanities to enhance research, education, and cultural preservation. Together, let's forge new paths in understanding our world through the lens of digital innovation.

In an increasingly interconnected world, global sport plays a pivotal role in shaping national identities and influencing youth culture. The event "Borders, Youth, Neoliberalism: How Global Sport Undermines and Strengthens National Borders" aims to explore the multifaceted dynamics at play when international sports events capture global attention. This conference brings together academics, policymakers, and sports enthusiasts to examine how global sport simultaneously challenges and reinforces national borders, impacting the lives of young people around the world.

One of the key themes of the event is the examination of how neoliberal policies influence the organization and perception of global sport. As sports become more commercialized, the economic interests of corporations and nations often intersect, leading to complex power dynamics. The event will delve into case studies and theoretical frameworks to understand how these economic forces shape the experiences of athletes and fans alike, particularly among the youth who are often at the forefront of these cultural shifts.

Moreover, the conference will explore the social and political implications of global sport. Sports have the unique ability to unite people across borders, fostering a sense of global community. However, they also serve as platforms for national pride and identity, sometimes leading to tensions and rivalries. The event will discuss how these dual roles of global sport impact youth culture, influencing their sense of belonging and identity. Through panel discussions, keynote speeches, and interactive workshops, participants will gain a deeper understanding of the role of sport in the neoliberal era and its impact on the future of national borders and youth identity. Join us for this thought-provoking exploration of the intersection of sport, borders, and youth culture in the globalized world.

• Rossella Alba Group on "Controversial tools: researching modelling practices in water governance"
  Hosting IAS: Mak’it, SCAS , Paris, NIAS
   
• Allassonnière-Tang Group on "Unraveling the interactions between culture and language: Does grammatical gender foster gender inequality and vice versa? "
  Hosting IAS:  Paris, IIAS, MIAS, HIAS, Zukunftskolleg, NIAS
   
• Lemoine-Schonne Group on " Metamorphoses of Law(s)?  A critical exploration of planetary boundaries and their meaning for the law relating to the environment "
  Hosting IAS: Paris, IIAS, Mak’it, TURIN , NIAS, CEU
   
• Kathryn Roberts Group on "A Transformation Framework for Artist Residencies, based on Internal Critiques, Alternative Histories, and Emerging Practices "
  Hosting IAS: MIAS (Twice) , Mak’it, HIAS

For more information on the programme, please check the dedicated page.

Language-based Assessments (LanBAs)
DATE: Wednesday, 29 November, 12:30 p.m.
LOCATION: Budapest, Nádor u. 15, Room 103

Linguistic behavior serves as a reliable, inexpensive, and increasingly automated resource to assess different aspects of individuals and societies. Speech helps detect incipient health issues; newspaper corpora are used to identify stereotypes and societal biases; and wordlists are the basis to determine verbal development. However, these and other relevant developments (which we label language-based assessments or LanBAs) have been concocted, tested, and deployed primarily on a handful of large and commercially central languages, with English dominating the scene. Since the 6,500 extant languages can and do vary substantially, transferring LanBAs from English to them is fraught with technical and linguistic challenges. The consequences of this bias, which we are only starting to understand, is that users of minority languages have at their disposal more expensive, less efficient, and potentially biased LanBAs. A novel source of worldwide inequity looms large across multiple social arenas. We propose to address this issue by gathering a diverse set of experts with three main tracks of activity: (1) critically synthesizing the scientific evidence revealing the Anglophone bias in LanBAs, (2) engaging policy-makers, experts on language technologies, and other non-academic agents, and (3) transferring knowledge to the general audience through diverse media strategies.

Speakers:

• Damian Blasi – team leader/Harvard University, USA – Max Plank Institute for the Science of Human History, Germany – Higher School of Economics, Russia
• Joseph P. Dexter  - Data Science Initiative and Department of Human Evolutionary Biology,  Harvard University
• Adolfo Martín García  - Director, Cognitive Neuroscience Center, Universidad de San Andres, Argentina
• Camila Scaff – Postdoctoral Researcher - Human Ecology group, Institute of Evolutionary Medicine (IEM), University of Zurich,
• Amber Gayle Thalmayer - Assistant Professor, Department of Psychology, University of Zürich

Please see the project description here.  The presentation is a part of the short visit planned and scheduled within the Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) programme an initiative of NetIAS and coordinated by the IAS CEU.

RSVP Agnes Bendik at bendikag ceu [dot] edu (bendikag[at]ceu[dot]edu)

The European Institutes for Advanced Study (EURIAS) recently convened in the picturesque city of Konstanz for their annual meeting, a gathering designed to strengthen cooperation and foster intellectual exchange among its member institutions. This meeting served as a vital platform for scholars and researchers to share insights, explore collaborative opportunities, and address the challenges and successes of their respective projects. The event underscored the importance of interdisciplinary cooperation in driving innovation and advancing knowledge across various fields of study.

During the meeting, participants delved into discussions on a range of initiatives under the Netias umbrella, showcasing both new and ongoing projects. One of the highlights was the Constructive Advanced Thinking (CAT) programme, which aims to promote innovative and forward-thinking research. The CAT programme encourages scholars to tackle complex issues with creative and unconventional approaches, fostering a culture of intellectual risk-taking and exploration. Additionally, the meeting featured updates on the Netias Debates series, a platform for rigorous academic discourse on pressing contemporary issues. These debates provide a space for diverse perspectives to engage in dialogue, enriching the scholarly community and contributing to the development of new ideas and solutions.

Moreover, the annual meeting provided an opportunity for members to engage in various working groups focused on themes of common interest. These groups serve as incubators for collaborative research, allowing scholars to pool their expertise and resources to address shared challenges. By fostering such collaborations, the European Institutes for Advanced Study aim to amplify the impact of their research, driving progress in areas such as social sciences, humanities, and beyond. The meeting in Konstanz reaffirmed the commitment of EURIAS members to pushing the boundaries of knowledge and promoting a culture of intellectual curiosity and cooperation.

DATE: Thursday, 22 June 11:00 – 13:00
LOCATION: Budapest, Nador 15 Room 101 (Quantum room)

Societies in European cities are faced with environmental problems related to air and water quality, biodiversity loss, and advancing climate change. At the same time cities need to tackle socio-economic issues such as social cohesion and justice or the transition to sustainable mobility systems. All these challenges place complex demands on the design, use and functionality of urban space and infrastructures. Nature-based Solutions (NbS) are expected to play a major role in solving these issues through a redefinition and amplification of their multi-functionality in urban areas. i.e. the potential of vegetation to cool urban areas. Our Constructive Advanced Thinking network “reshape cities” combines knowledge from civil engineering, geography, architecture, landscape architecture and social sciences that needs to be combined for such complex challenges. Based on case studies, we will cross current knowledge frontiers regarding key issues of upscaling and mainstreaming of NbS and develop innovative ideas for improved multi-functionality, integral cost-benefit sharing and diverse stakeholder engagement. Our individual research’s foci are applied in an integrated manner to different case study cities at different spatial scales. By connecting our different schools of thought, we develop diverse kinds of knowledge required for socio-ecological transformations: technical knowledge (evidence base for NbS functionality / efficiency); policy knowledge (governance tools and strategies for upscaling green infrastructure); and transformative knowledge (leverage points, transformative actions and methods). The integration of these knowledge dimensions across case studies (e.g. with different climatological, political, social contexts) and spatial scales (building - neighborhood - city-wide-level) will be conceptually addressed and result in policy recommendations regarding the upscaling and mainstreaming of NbS in European cities.

Speakers:

• Principal Investigator Prof. Maria Manso, Lusófona University, Lisbon, Portugal
• Prof. Rieke Hansen, Geisenheim University, Germany
• Andrea Nóblega Carriquiry, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
• Manuel Beißler, Leibniz University Hannover, Germany

Further information on the project
Further information on the CAT programme

Within recent discussions of sovereignty, the multiplication of borders and borderlands has become a major research topic in anthropology. Europe is one of the main targets of this scholarly investigation but all anthropological literature on European borders reinforcement has been dedicated to continental Europe and the rim of the Mediterranean Sea. In this presentation Catherine Benoit will argue that the borderlands of “Fortress Europe” are instead located far from the shores of the Mediterranean, the Channel or the land border with Turkey, and are made of the French overseas departments of the Caribbean and the Indian ocean. They are the invisible buffer zones of France and the European Union on the edge of the former French colonial empire, not only in a geographical sense but also in a historical one.

Irina Nicorici’s contribution will focus on the history of human movements on the easternmost periphery of Europe, along its borders with the erstwhile USSR. For this event, we will set aside the conventional assumption that these borders were impenetrable during the Cold War and will instead examine how some migrants crossed them. Drawing on new archival evidence, this presentation advances the following argument: Migration towards the Soviet Union heavily depended on interpersonal connections rather than formal state authority. Public officials elevated intimate, informally driven sponsorship relations above all other factors as critical for residency and citizenship status acquisition, thus radically reshaping mobility and the welfare state. 

On the basis of an ethnographic, longitudinal study with Senegalese migrants (mainly men) in Catalonia, Spain, María Hernández-Carretero will discuss bordering experiences of migrants in situations of chronic and cyclical administrative irregularity. She examines how borderscapes – spaces of hierarchization, exclusion, racism, and persecution – are built and maintained well beyond Europe’s actual borders, and how migrants manage and resist the chronification (in the sense of becoming entrenched) and societal normalisation of irregularity. Hernández-Carretero analyses these intranational dynamics applying Mbembe’s concept of ‘necropolitics’ – the politics that dictate who may live and die (and how) –, a concept that has typically been used to examine dynamics of migrant exclusion at nation states’ physical territorial borders.

Speakers:

• María Hernández Carretero, MIAS fellow, Madrid 
  Anthropologist and migration researcher, with a background in sociology and international development and peace studies
• Irina Nicorici, New Europe College fellow, Bucharest 
  Sociologist working on Migrations between Romania and the Soviet Union, 1960-1990
• Catherine Benoit, IMéRA fellow, Marseille 
  Professor of Anthropology at the Department of Anthropology, Connecticut College