You missed our public event “EU Foreign Policy in Times of Populism” on 27 February 2020 in Vienna? But you want to learn more about proceedings there? Don’t worry! It’s accessible here now.

The purpose of the Short Term Scientific Mission (STSM) in Rome was preparing a new publication on “Decentring European Foreign Policy Analysis in a non-European world”, following my 2018 article on the same theme in Cooperation and Conflict with Sharon Lecocq. The affiliation with our COST partners in Rome, Istituto Affari Internazionali (IAI), would allow me to take advantage of their expertise about not only EU foreign policy but also the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The STSM became shorter than expected as a result of the Corona outbreak: events were cancelled, the physical premises of IAI and all Italian universities were closed, and eventually all of Italy came under strict lockdown. At that time, most European countries (and scholars) did not yet realize this trajectory would soon hit them as well.

The lockdown in Italy and early return to Leuven implied that several of the planned activities and meetings were put on hold. However, I would like to use this short blog post to reflect on two dilemmas related to academic research that were highlighted during an enlightening closed-door IAI seminar on the crisis in Libya and during subsequent informal talks – dilemmas which reflected some of my earlier research experiences.

Dilemma 1. Regarding sensitive foreign policy and security issues, the most crucial data and insight are often obtained from informal chats and closed-door meetings (under Chatham House rules), implying that they cannot formally be referred to. Although the resulting knowledge can be much more valuable and even give a completely different picture about the situation, standard methodological rules and GDPR increasingly require scholars set aside these insights in favour of information obtained through publically available sources, formal interviews and surveys. One can wonder about the value of academic research that disregards such kinds of insights that are obtained informally and confidentially.

Dilemma 2. Seminars and talks with practitioners and analysts from third countries towards which European foreign policy is directed (and that are thus also the subject of research by EU foreign policy scholars), often bring to the fore concepts, actors, values, phenomena, etc. that they consider of crucial importance to understand dynamics in their country, but that may not fit – or are even excluded – in the research interests, academic vocabulary and analytical frameworks of EU foreign policy scholars. Two examples mentioned by interlocutors from the MENA region are religious values and ‘tribes’. The latter example even points to a larger dilemma and paradox: how to deal with phenomena and concepts such as ‘tribes’, which Western scholars increasingly point to as definitely to be avoided in academic research (in view of its (neo-)colonial connotations), but which some MENA practitioners and analysts refer to as definitely not to be disregarded. These issues point to wider and fundamental debates about ‘decolonising’ academic research and on the appropriation, selective use or silencing of ‘non-European’ data, concepts and world views by European scholar – a theme that does not appear very high on the agenda of EU foreign policy scholars.

These two dilemma’s may be recognizable or touch a nerve among other EU foreign policy scholars – and may be worth  a broader debate in one of the following ENTER activities. To conclude, I also wish to express my gratitude to Hila Zahavi and Sigita Urdze for taking good care of the STSMs, to the colleagues at IAI and to Riccardo Alcaro, Daniela Huber and Lorenzo Kamel in particular. I am looking forward to continuing our academic exchanges in post-Corona times!

Due to the current corona pandemie situation there will be deviations in the implementation of the program of COST Action ENTER with immediate effect.

Nevertheless, we are available for all of you, please use email contact possibilites first, as TU Darmstadt is more or less shut down.

Please use this link for comprehensive information on regulations implemented by COST in connection with the corona virus.

We wish you all the best and stay healthy

Michèle Knodt, Patrick Müller and Sigita Urdze

I attended the International Conference on International Security Studies in February 2020 with my supervisor, Dr Constantinos Adamides. In presenting our research and preliminary findings, we were able to interact with other scholars and researchers in an interdisciplinary fashion. As the overarching theme focused on international security, we were equally receptive of other views within security studies, such as the role of culture and identity, software use and technological innovation, as well as questions on the relationship between small states and other bigger states in blocs such as the European Union. Our presentation mainly focused on how the lack of a comprehensive security framework in small states might present itself as a considerable threat for the overarching bloc – in this case, a weak security and defence infrastructure in Cyprus would leave the entire EU bloc exposed. We engaged with both the theoretical and empirical concepts behind this reasoning. Our preliminary data also presented case studies in which Cyprus indeed left the EU exposed (e.g. the hacking of diplomatic credentials discovered in December 2018 gave Chinese hackers access to confidential information on migration, security and energy policy, and others – thus effectively jeopardizing the bloc).

Although our initial work focused on mainly the abstract, keywords, theoretical challenges, as well as some practical and technical understanding of empirical cases, we have emphasized that this is part of a larger project on security studies in Europe and in international politics. In fact, this segment we had analyzed is a portion of my on PhD, thus I am proud that my own research has led to an exciting new path, which is supported by own supervisor’s work.

As a Research Associate at the Diplomatic Academy – University of Nicosia and PhD candidate at the Department of Politics and Governance, I received useful feedback from my supervisor during the in improving further on my presentation skills. In fact, the support provided to me by both my supervisor, as well as from other fellow researchers at the conference was of paramount importance. I have been able to utilize this and attend classes as a guest lecturer on International Relations Theory and Digital Diplomacy at my University.

Finally, this preliminary work has opened up new opportunities for further research within small states in Europe, particularly Cyprus, Malta, and Estonia. I have pursued partnerships with other researchers from King’s College London, the LSE, and the University of Auckland (New Zealand). Such partnerships are expressed in the form of future articles – a future publication examines grand strategy of small states within the EU, whereas another looks at the importance of critical infrastructure systems in small states.

Yesterday our Public Panel on “EU Foreign Policy in Times of Populism” was held in the Diplomatic Academy in Vienna. We are proud that we had renown speakers:

• Gerda Falkner (Professor at University of Vienna): Right Wing Populist Parties in the EU and their positions on Foreign Policy
• Ivan Krastev (Permanent Fellow, Institute for Human Sciences, Vienna): After Europe
• Kristi Raik (Director Estonian Foreign Policy Institut)

We had a large audience participating in this stimulating event.