In November last year, the School of Politics and International Relations was pleased to host the UPTAKE workshop: “Whither Liberal World Order?; Challenges from Russia, Eurasia and Beyond funded by the European Union”
Since Russia’s annexation of Crimea and its subsequent intervention in the Donbass, international disorder now allegedly characterizes the state of global affairs. Indeed, the events of 2014 are seen to mark the clearest departure yet from the post-Cold War order, with Moscow defying Western leadership in unambiguous fashion. The vote for Brexit, the election of Donald Trump and the rise of Eurosceptic parties on the continent further contributed to a sense that we are witnessing a crisis of liberal world order.
It is this international context that brought scholars from institutions across more than a dozen countries together at the University of Kent on 2-3 November 2017 to discuss the future of international order at a workshop funded by the UPTAKE academic consortium, focused primarily on theoretical issues raised by recent developments and the extent to which China and Russia present a genuine challenge to the liberal order.
UPTAKE is a consortium of three partners – the University of Tartu in Estonia, Uppsala University in Sweden and the University of Kent in the UK – in the field of Russian and East European Studies. The goal of the consortium is to increase research productivity and excellence through a diverse programme of joint activities, including the launch of new academic conference series, the organisation of workshops and post-graduate training schools, extensive inter-institutional mobility, joint supervision of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, and coordinated promotion of research outputs, as well as a range of dissemination and communication measures.
To read a summary of the workshop; its principle themes, ideas and conclusions, authored by workshop co-organizers and POLIR University of Kent PhD candidates Zhouchen Mao, Camille Merlen and Zachary Paikin, please click here
