CBEES Annual Conference 2026

Theme: The Baltic Sea Region and Eastern Europe in the Emerging Global (Dis)Order

As we find ourselves in the midst of an emerging new world order, the aim of this conference is to enable scholarly discussions regarding how the Baltic Sea region and Eastern Europe contribute to our understanding of the latest global reconfiguration of international relations, epistemic frameworks and technological possibilities: its transitions, ruptures, and watersheds.
The Baltic Sea region and Eastern Europe are seen here as a prism through which the current changes in the world reordering may be observed. While previously, Eastern Europe could be portrayed as the exceptional space of turmoil and either teleological transition or tragic backsliding, the past few years have made it clear to the ever broader public that the stability of the Western liberal order has always been an illusion. In light of this, how can the knowledge of the region be wielded to better understand the global “transitions and ruptures”?

For this conference, we invoke the Gramsci interregnum view of the old world dying and the new world struggling to be born, and pose the questions: what is the emerging “time of monsters,” how does it take shape, with what consequences, and how do we resist them?

To answer this question, the conference addresses the region both as an object of study and a laboratory of knowledge. It is here that we find “Orban’s playbook” and “Putin’s playbook,” together with the different scales of counter-movements and practices of resistance to these developments. We invite scholars to explore the (co)occurrence and strategic synergy of various anti-liberal mobilisations, together with matters such as the aesthetics of illiberalism and contemporary authoritarianism, the role of Big Tech and new media, populist styles and strategies of communication, and the hollowing out of the democratic institutional system. This could include ethnographic research on existing communities as well as the studies of culture and historical precedents.

We invite papers on the topic in all disciplines and particularly, but not exclusively, those addressing the following questions:

• If the West and the Global North thrived in and because of the old order, who will prosper in the new one?
• How are the various Eastern European “playbooks” adapted to new environments, by whom, and with what effects?
• How are particular aesthetics (as well as counter-aesthetics) mobilized in service of the new world order? What cultural forms and genres appear effective in enabling it, provide support in the face of it, or bolster the spirit of resistance?
• How does technology enable these transitions and ruptures?
  How has communication technology been weaponized both by the would-be beneficiaries of the new world order and by those resisting them?
• How are the current transformations of global capitalism (erosion of free trade, deglobalization, “creative destruction” and financialization, arrested economic growth, and rising inequalities), as well as the ways governments and societies respond to them (deregulation, rising protectionism, welfare erosion, and anti-immigration policies), implicated in the global and regional upheavals?
• What happens to the democratic institutions caught up in this reordering, and what role does disillusionment with “the West” play in it?
• How does the perceived “end of the peace era,” militarization, and mobilization in the face of the military threat posed by Russia, China, and other actors influence societies, their democratic institutions, and public discourse?
• How do the agents of the illiberal reordering appropriate and mobilize the language of rights and freedoms, and the critique of power, and how can this be meaningfully countered?

Call for applications

The call for papers and panels will be announced in the second half of April.
Further information will be published on this webpage.