ИСТИНА

The European International Studies Association (EISA) in cooperation with University of Tartu, Estonia organized the First European Workshops in International Studies (EWIS). It took place on 5 - 8 June 2013 in Tartu, at the Department of Social Sciences of the oldest university in Estonia. Several workshops were set up, dealing with a wide range of topics and themes, from Epistemology to Sovereignty, from Governance to Global Energy Relations. Three professors chaired the event, Thomas Diez, Viacheslav Morozov, and Knud Erik Jorgensen. Through their introductory remarks, they illustrated the main problems in organizing such events and in dealing with personal and professional disputes that in fact undermine the output and growth of the scientific community. Notwithstanding these contingent issues, the workshops benefitted from the high level of discussion among the conveners and the presenters. The second day was opened by the guest lecture by Barry Buzan, a renowned scholar in the field of Security Studies, who stimulated curiosity in the audience with a fresh and inspiring lecture on “The making of modern international relations: the 19th century as axial time of world politics”. Prof. Buzan made the case for a new reading of the history and causality of international relations, stressing the importance of the global transformations that took place in the 19th century, that changed the environment in which relations among countries, development models, and cultures took place. The publication of the thought-provoking argument defended by Prof. Buzan at the lecture would surely contribute to the advancement of the discipline. One of the workshops, “New Approaches to Understanding Contemporary Global Energy Relations”, was the venue for PECOB affiliates Elvira Oliva and Paolo Sorbello to present their preliminary research on the learning process that the European Union went through in terms of nuclear safety throughout the “big bang” wave of accession. In particular, Elvira and Paolo looked at the evolution of the legal framework with reference to the Bulgarian accession, which they are comparing with the case of Lithuania for a chapter that will be part of a collective book on assessing the legal consequences of EU membership for the countries that entered in 2004.