CONFERENCE: 13-14 September
2007
The University of Edinburgh
The Playfair Library, Old College, South Bridge
"Belonging in the New Europe: A Scottish Perspective"
This interdisciplinary conference brought together scholars from countries in both the 'new' and 'old' Europe to address forms taken by new relational modes of belonging in the context of globalisation processes, new migration patterns and the action of new political subjects.
Ideas and experiences of belonging will be addressed in terms of exterior conditions; of narrative, spatial and historical dimensions, and of cultural engagement and socio-political formulation. The conference had a particular focus on Scotland, which many writers and scholars from Eastern Europe see as offering notably productive points of comparison.
The rationale for the conference emerged from a three-year Research Theme on 'Diasporas, Migrations and Identities' run at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh, a project that has brought 22 scholars from twelve countries to work as Fellows of the Institute on issues of comparative cultural identity in a Scottish context.
The keynote address was given by Allan Little (BBC Correspondent) on "Blood and Belonging: From Bosnia to the Baltics"
For further information, email iash@ed.ac.uk