Unpacking Global Governance
The Department of Global Governance was founded at the end of 2020 at the Institute of Foundations of Law at the University of Graz bringing together expertise from the fields of law, political science, social sciences, humanities and cultural studies. The kick-off event in 2021 was the online symposium "Unpacking Global Governance," followed in 2023 by the conference "Global Governance: Between Multipolarity and Universality" (youtube.com), which built on the presentations and discussions of the first symposium. The next step is the publication of an edited volume that addresses and analyzes the pressing challenges of international governance. It will draw on the collective expertise of leading scholars in the fields of international relations, human rights and peace studies to address global, regional and local issues that span the dimensions of global governance.
Law, Peace and Conflict
A wide variety of projects on (international) peace mediation and peacebuilding take place as part of this focus. The online conference format "Local Peace Formation" gives local peace actors from the affected (post-)war zones an independent voice and brings them into dialog with researchers and students. Another online series on "Peace through Dialogue" discusses the difficulties of local peace mediation with international experts. Students are the explicit focus of the annual international Peace Summer School organized by the department together with partner organizations of the CPD Cluster, which takes place at Schlaining Castle as part of the Austrian Forum for Peace and focuses on different topics. A long-standing project is the Policy Blog, which is aimed in particular at political decision-makers (from civil society to state and international organizations) and provides recommendations for action. Highly renowned international experts are regularly recruited as authors for the main topics. Other projects involve third-party funding within the framework of various EU calls or national research funds such as the Austrian Research Promotion Agency (FFG) or the Austrian Science Fund (FWF), for example within the framework of Environmental Peacebuilding.
Pivot to Asia
The main objective of this project is the initiation of a public discussion series about the background, consequences, dangers, and possibilities of a rapidly and significantly changing world order, which focuses on two axes: the Pacific region with China as the main gravitational center and Europe gravitating increasingly to the US in light of the ongoing Ukrainian war. The developments of the past half a year proved that geopolitical strategies based on hegemonic ideas – including current Russian aggression against Ukraine and its’ rhetoric about the need for change in the world order, foreign policy of the USA, which is sometimes criticized as "remaking the world in America's image" and Chinese emphasized neutrality - appear increasingly vulnerable in the face of multipolar world order. This discussion series aims to outline the possibilities and predict the outcomes of the profound power shifts and their consequences on the basis of concrete topics, always keeping an eye on the questions of determining the position of Europe and the wider Eurasian region. In addition, the project aims to provide a better understanding of the past and current geopolitical strategy debates, which are currently undergoing a significant change in character due to the rise of China and the open opposition of the West by Russia.
