The Academy is a place for discussion. With its different events – evening lectures, panels, summer academies and fireside chats – it aims to share ideas from its work and from the Fellows’ research with the public. It invites guests from science, politics and other areas of society to join in the dialogue.
Current
events
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WorkshopBordering on disorder
Fragile borders in a global world
Global borders are dynamic. As a political phenomenon, borders are undergoing perpetual change: the bordering process is an ongoing project, one that responds to a global and regional assortment of anthropogenic and naturogenic pressures. Conflict, climate change, pandemics, trade, technology and migration patterns are just a few examples of the many stresses, often interrelated, to which borders are subject and to which they subsequently adjust. As much as borders are dynamic, they are equally heterogenous; they differ as a function of diverse security environments. In other words, how borders adjust in response to new and evolving pressures, such as climate change or a global pandemic, will look different at each border.
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Freedom of Expression in the 21st Century
Between democratic backsliding, disinformation, and the limits of tolerance
In December, the Russian human rights organisation Memorial will be awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo. To mark the occasion, the Academy of International Affairs NRW has invited the co-founder and Executive Director of Memorial International Dr. h.c. Elena Zhemkova to Bonn. The former President of the European Court of Human Rights, Prof. Dr. Róbert Spanó, will discuss the topic of freedom of expression with her. The Minister for Federal and European Affairs, Nathanael Liminski, will deliver the greeting.
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Workshop
Emerging Market Democracies as Pivotal States
Regional Powers in an eroded Liberal International Order
The dawn of the 21st Century signaled that a multipolar world would emerge after the American dominance after the end of the Cold War. The acronym BRICs—which stands for the initials of Brazil, Russia, India, and China—was created in 2001 by an investment bank to signal to the market that the global markets would no longer evolve around the advanced industrial democracies of the G7, composed by the United States, Japan, Germany, France, United Kingdom, Italy, and Canada. Two decades after the BRICS—now with a capital S, which stands for South Africa—hold regular meetings in several issue areas. Yet, more than a multipolar world, it seems that we have witnessed the rise of a new bipolarity that opposes Washington and Beijing amidst a global decline in the indexes of democracy and adherence to liberal ideas.
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Panel Discussion Livestream
Assessing Climate and Security Research in North Rhine-Westphalia
Panel discussion as part of the Bonn Future Lab on Strategic Foresight “Climate Change and Security”, International Security Forum Bonn 2022
Short-term extreme weather events such as storms or floods as well as long-term transformations of climatic conditions change environments and human habitats in the long term. In unstable regions affected by armed conflicts, they can become so-called “threat multipliers” (e.g. through tightening of food security due to climatic changes), also in high-income countries they can tie up capacities and investments for adaptation and resilience building in the medium and long term and in exceptional cases even fundamentally endangering the very existence of states or sub-state regions, as some island states in the South Pacific are increasingly finding out.
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Workshop
Digitalization of Memory in China
Digitalization transforms museums, theaters, cinemas, heritage sites, and other identity-creating stakeholders. They began providing streams and other online participation opportunities to stay in touch with visitors. Digitalization offers new modes of interaction and might impact shaping and curation memory. This workshop explores the digitalization of memory in China. Digitalization and datafication spread out much faster in China than in other countries. Despite the rapid digital development in China, research on digital memory is still an unattended field.
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Summer Academy
The Geopolitics of Disinformation
Social Media and International Relations
In the wake of the “Arab Spring” and the social protests related to the financial crisis, there was a widespread enthusiasm about the role that social media channels can play for democratic protest movements. Ten years later the euphoria over new, democratic opportunities for communication and political opinion-forming online has largely given way to disillusionment. It has now long been the case that the collective political movements being formed through social media are not just grassroots and democratic in kind, and they are using social media for populist, propagandist and at times openly anti-democratic disinformation campaigns. Their intentions and intitiators are becoming ever harder to trace: we can no longer tell bots from humans, while astroturfing mimics spontaneous grassroots movements in order to manipulate masses of people.
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Workshop
The Global Politics of Artificial Intelligence
Historical, Comparative, and Critical Perspectives
The aim of this workshop is to contribute to the global study of artificial intelligence (AI) from the postwar to the present. It will bring together intellectual historians, political theorists, and sociologists in order to investigate the political theories and world order visions conveyed by historical and present-day AI technologies; to compare them across contexts; and to reflect on the challenges raised by such comparisons.
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Event
Friendship without boundaries?
The Russian-Chinese relationship during the war in Ukraine and its implications for Europe’s future
Russia and China seem closer than ever notwithstanding the war in Ukraine. The Chinese leadership has refused to criticize Russia despite mounting pressure to condemn the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine. Just as Russia becomes economically and politically more reliant on its eastern neighbour, China is unwilling to give up years of trust building and forming a united ideological front against NATO and the US. At the same time, China is worried about being affected by the Western sanctions levied against Russia.
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Workshop
Social Media Impact on International Affairs
This workshop brings together academics from computer science, economics, psychology, sociology, and political science to exchange opinions on contributions each of the disciplines can make to mitigate the risks of (social) media-based disinformation and polarization in international relations and develop options for interdisciplinary cooperation to this end.
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Event
Ukraine – Russia
Identity and History in a Current Conflict
Russia is pursuing a war of aggression against Ukraine with the goal of forcing its disappearance as an independent state and of fundamentally altering the security architecture of Europe. At the same time, it has become clear how much the return of thinking in terms of spheres of influence builds on historical arguments, which were used by Vladimir Putin himself in 2021 in an essay more than 20 pages long. There he insisted that the Ukraine belongs to a Russian and Orthodox cultural sphere. The justification it has given for the invasion of its neighbour is also based on purported historical circumstances.
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Impulse
Lectures for the Consular Corps
On 15 February 2022, the Consular Corps of North Rhine-Westphalia was invited to the Academy of International Affairs NRW. There, Regine Grienberger, Ambassador for Cyber Foreign Policy at the Federal Foreign Office, spoke about Cyber Diplomacy. Political scientist Volker Kronenberg from the University of Bonn reported on his department.
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Celebratory Event
Opening Ceremony
At the invitation of the Minister-President of North Rhine–Westphalia, Armin Laschet, the opening ceremony of the Nordrhein-Westfälische Akademie für Internationale Politik – Academy of International Affairs NRW was held on 25.08.2021. At the seat of the Academy at Bad Godesberg in Bonn, the Executive Director Mayssoun Zein Al Din welcomed numerous guests from the worlds of politics and research. Among those present were Nana Addo Dankwa Akufo-Addo, President of the Republic of Ghana, Jean Asselborn, Foreign Minister of the Grand Duchy of Luxemburg, and the former Foreign Minister of Afghanistan, Rangin Dadfar Spanta.
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Summer Academy
Artificial Intelligence and International Politics
The first event, the Summer Academy ‘Artificial Intelligence and International Politics’, has already taken place. The Academy held a discussion with members of the scientific and diplomatic communities about the role of Artificial Intelligence in international relations. Individual lectures were broadcast online in a livestream and are now freely available as video or audio recordings.
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