This weekly digest is a collection of news, upcoming events and other opportunities from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Lund University and the wider area, compiled by Graduate School students.
- Witnessing genocide: Experience of Nazi Concentration Camps: Visit of UB’s Ravensbrück Archives
- Changing spatialities and agency at Myanmar’s highest borderlands
- The centrality of the margins: Borderlands, illicit economies and uneven development
- How can we together safeguard democracy?
- Bridging East and West – Moldova on the path to the EU
Witnessing genocide: Experience of Nazi Concentration Camps: Visit of UB’s Ravensbrück Archives
Seminar
In 1945, about 20 000 survivors of German concentration camps were evacuated to Sweden. Their experiences were documented by a working group called “The Polish Research Institute in Lund“. The materials of the Institute are housed in Lund’s University Library and include, amongst many other things, drawings and paintings, letters, poems & photographs.
On 13 May at 14:00, the curators of the Ravensbrück Archive will host a session at the University Library (UB). The event will cover the collection, the stories that emerge from it, and the importance of remembering the Holocaust.
Please register by emailing: emilija.branda@jur.lu.se
Arranged by the Museum of International Law (Link to the Museum of International Law )
This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War Two on 8 May 1945. Like no other war, WW2 has shaped the political, social and – not least – the (international) legal configuration of our world. The UN and its various sub-organs (e.g. the International Court of Justice), the EC/EU and the International Criminal Court, to name just a few, were created explicitly with the aim to prevent future wars. Against the background of increasing tensions around the world, it is opportune to reflect on the legacy of the Second World War and, in particular, on the war’s impact on the lives of ordinary humans.
Date and time: 13 May 2025, 14:00-15:00
Location: Lund University Library (UB), Helgonavägen 2
For more information, visit this page
Changing spatialities and agency at Myanmar’s highest borderlands
Open lecture with Karin Dean, senior researcher, Tallinn University
Myanmar’s highest borderlands are defined by naturally connected but politically and geopolitically dissected vast mountainous spaces of the eastern Himalayas around the tri-junction of China, Myanmar and India. Their sweeping extent, but more so the politics and challenges of access allow us to produce knowledge of these places and their societies in tiny bits. The presentation provides a glimpse of the changing socio-political dynamics at the borderlands between Arunachal Pradesh and Kachin State through two key themes. One is the effects of space on theories and local actions, interactions and developments. The other is the community, livelihood and wider cultural resilience at and across Myanmar’s highest borderlands.
Karin Dean is a senior researcher at Tallinn University’s School of Humanities, trained in political geography. She currently heads the Eur-Asian Border Lab (https://borderlab.eu/), an active platform to foster trans-regional dialogue in border studies. Karin’s research interest revolves around borders—on how different actors construct, negotiate and cross physical, symbolic or virtual borders in their claiming of political space. Most of her research has focused on the contested spatialities at Myanmar’s borderlands and the Kachin connectivities across China and Myanmar, while most recently she has extended her research to the Indian ‘side’ at Arunachal Pradesh-Myanmar borderlands
Date and time: 13 May 2025, 15:15-17:00
Location: Asia Library, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Sölvegatan 18 B, Lund
For more information, visit this page
The centrality of the margins: Borderlands, illicit economies and uneven development
Open lecture with Patrick Meehan, University of Manchester
‘Bringing development’ to ‘peripheral’ borderland regions has become a powerful trope in development policy across South and Southeast Asia, evident in strategies like India’s Look East policy and China’s Belt and Road Initiative. This approach exemplifies what David Harvey critically terms a “diffusionist narrative”, in which regions marked by violence, poverty, and illegality are framed as marginal spaces left behind by the uneven diffusion of capitalism and state institutions. Development, in this narrative, is equated with integrating ‘lagging regions’ into states and markets. This talk challenges that logic. Focusing on Myanmar’s borderlands with China, it explores how the persistence of poverty, violence, and illegality is a consequence of how this region has been integrated into national, regional, and global political economies, rather than a ‘lack of’ integration. Two broader themes frame this analysis. First, the ‘centrality of the margins’ rethinks borderlands as active sites shaping state power and capitalism, rather than passive zones awaiting intervention. Second, drawing on the literature on combined and uneven development, this talk explores how maintaining borderlands as zones of illegality and liminality can benefit political and economic elites and drive development in metropolitan centres, but in ways that further marginalise borderland populations. By exploring the drug trade and rare earth mining, this talk shows how poverty, violence, and illegality are not merely residual effects of conflict, state failure, and economic marginalisation, but are embedded in the DNA of state formation and capitalism in Myanmar’s borderlands, and in the spatially uneven dynamics of accumulation, precarity, and development across East and Southeast Asia.
Dr. Patrick Meehan is a Lecturer in Peace and Conflict Studies in the Humanitarian and Conflict Response Institute at the University of Manchester. His research addresses issues of violence, conflict and development. His work focuses particularly on Myanmar and the borderland and frontier regions of Southeast Asia, where he has conducted research for more than a decade.
Date and time: 14 May 2025, 13:15-14:45
Location: Asia Library, Centre for East and South-East Asian Studies, Sölvegatan 18 B, Lund
For more information, visit this page
How can we together safeguard democracy?
Seminar
On 15 May 2025, the University invites you to a conversation about activism, education and censorship. The importance of communicating research at a time when many people with different knowledge claims are competing for the public’s attention.
Together with Lars Mogensen, invited guests will discuss ways in and out of academia and how the university can safeguard a democratic society based on the following questions:
- Activism, actors and agendas – a question of roles and responsibilities?
- Education, libraries and pictures – in conflict or in line with education?
- Censorship, cancellation and critigue – who is listened to and why?
For whom: employees, students, and anyone interested.
Register for the seminar by filling in your email address at the bottom of the registration page: How can we protect democracy together?
Participants: Anette Novak, Anna Jonsson, Bodil Jönsson, Carl Cederström, Eugenia Perez-Vico, Farshid Jalalvand, Hedvig Ljungar, Jenny Björkman, Jimmie Kristensson, Joakim Lyth, Magnus Thure Nilsson, Mikael Jonsson, Moa Berglöf, Olof Sundin, Rebecca Selberg and Sten Widmalm
Moderator: Lars Mogensen.
Date and time: 15 May 2025, 15–18,
Location: Skissernas Museum, Lund.
For more information, visit this page
Bridging East and West – Moldova on the path to the EU
Penal Discussion
On 25 June 2024, the EU held its first accession conference with Moldova, formally opening the membership negotiations. However, Moldova’s aspirations have been complicated by geopolitical challenges. The ongoing war in Ukraine has put Moldova under immense pressure, particularly from wide Russian-backed disinformation campaigns aimed at undermining Moldova’s European ambitions – notably during the last presidential elections of November 2024. Moldova also tackles a significant number of other challenges, such as large numbers of refugees, inflation, threats to its energy supplies and violations of its airspace.Despite all this Moldova has already started the process of integrating to fulfill its commitments to one day be a part of the European Union.Welcome to a panel discussion that will discuss opportunities and well as challenges to Moldova´s EU integration.
The seminar is arranged by Europe Direct Lund and Malmö University.
Registration closes by: May 19 2025 at 12:00 AM (Registration is required as drinks and a snack will be offered)
Date and time: 20 May 2025, 18:00 – 19:45
Location: Malmö stadsbibliotek, Röda rummet.
For more information, visit this page