University Center for International Studies European Studies Center
University Center for International Studies European Studies Center

Conversations and Commentaries on Europe: Video Resources

  1. Resources
  2. Conversations and Commentaries on Europe: Video Resources

 

ESC has online video offerings for select items from its extensive programming.  These resources are meant to ehance transatlantic conversations happening and enrich understandings of Europe here in the United States.

Resources can be used as classroom aids, out-of-classroom assignments, or as background for research papers.  Please provide proper citation of any of the resources used (examples below). Please let us know how you are using the videos! Send a message to europeanstudies@pitt.edu with your stories. 

You can also watch our collection on the UCIS YouTube Channel.

Citation examples:

  • MLA
    European Studies Center. "Title of Video." University of Pittsburgh, Date it was posted, URL.
     
  • APA
    [European Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh]. (Year, Month Day it was posted). Title of the Video [Video file]. Retrieved from URL.
     
  • Chicago
    European Studies Center, University of Pittsburgh. "Title of Video." YouTube video, length. Date published. URL.

 

Trade, Technology, and the Transatlantic Relationship
A conversation with European Commission Executive Vice Preseidnet Valdis Dombrovskis

September 30, 2021

 

 

 

 

Europe Today - "The EU as a Threat-Responsive Security State"

The EU as a Threat-Responsive Security State
Wednesday, February 15, 2023

Kaija E. Schilde
Boston University

The EU is a non-unitary security state of international significance and is threat responsive to challenges to its interests. It has become a security state through a combination of incremental institutional layering and shifts in international threat, primarily the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea and intervention in Eastern Ukraine, and the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine. The security studies debate on European strategic autonomy has so far ignored and dismissed the infrastructural power of the EU. The EU’s infrastructural power comes from regulatory, monetary and market instruments, and a nascent but increasing direct procurement of military materiel. EU infrastructural power complicates EU-related state formation theory debates. Traditional security states extract resources from their society, directly tax their populations, and have formal authority to generate military capability. Historically, the EU has done none of these things. Scholars using the conventional lens of state security authority have concluded that the EU is not yet a security state, because it does not tax and spend to generate military capacity on its own (Kelemen & McNamara, 2022). However, this misdiagnoses the sources of infrastructural security power in the 21st century, and only compares the political development of the EU to the generation of military power in earlier centuries. Moreover, this position fails to consider the comparative: how do contemporary non-EU states generate military capacity? To what are we comparing EU state formation? I theorize a broader definition of security state to align with 21st Century generation of military power and evaluates the shifts in EU infrastructural power in light of changes in the EU’s threat environment.

Conversations on Europe - "Climate Change: Perspectives from France and Italy"

Climate Change: Perspectives from France and Italy
Tuesday, February 14, 2023

In the last few years, we have seen an increasing international awareness of the challenges facing the interaction between human populations and a changing environment. In France and Italy, these issues have in fact occupied a really important role in philosophical, social and political debates and initiatives for at least five decades. Our panelists will offer a diverse and far-reaching presentation of their own involvement with the research and initiatives presently occurring in Italy and France.

MODERATOR:
Giuseppina Mecchia
University of Pittsburgh

PANELISTS:
Yves Citton
Université Paris 8 Vincennes-Saint Denis, France

Daniela Fargione
University of Turin, Italy

Giuseppina Mecchia
University of Pittsburgh

The series is intended to present a broad range of views and opinions about topics relevant to Europe. The views expressed are those of the presenters and cannot be taken to represent the views or opinions of the U.S. Government nor the European Union.

We would appreciate your feedback on these videos and the Conversations on Europe series. Please see our survey at: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/fo...

For more resources and readings related to this session or any of our past sessions, go to: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/esc/events/coe

This video has been funded with the assistance of both the European Commission (through the Erasmus + Programme) and the US Department of Education. The contents of this video are the sole responsibility of the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the U.S. government or the European Union.

Co-support provided by the International Foreign Language Education office of the U.S. Department of Education and the European Commission's Erasmus + Programme. Views and opinions expressed are those of the individual panelists and do not reflect the views or opinions of the U.S. Government or the European Union.

Europe Today - "Ethnopopulism and Authoritarian Rule in the European Union"

Ethnopopulism and Authoritarian Rule in the European Union
Wednesday, February 8, 2023

Milada Anna Vachudova
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Professor Vachudova will explore how the rise in support for populist parties has shaped party systems in Europe over the last decade, focusing on ethnopopulist parties -- parties that make strong anti-pluralist appeals, vilifying individuals, groups and institutions labeled as culturally harmful. When in power, ethnopopulist parties use these appeals to justify the concentration of power -- and this playbook has helped bring authoritarian rule to Hungary while Poland stands on the brink. She unpacks why ethnopopulism has become a challenge to liberal democracy in Europe, how oppositions have responded -- and why EU member governments have shown such complacency and cynicism in countering it. This has led to the risk of a decoupling of the EU from the regime type of liberal democracy. Yet Russia's war against Ukraine is changing political contestation related to liberal democracy and to relations with Russia in key states including Poland and Germany. Professor Vachudova will close by reflecting on Ukraine's challenge to the European Union -- and whether and how the EU enlargement process can be revived as a tool of EU foreign policy.

Europe Today - "EU Migration Governance"

EU Migration Governance: Coordination, Collaboration, Subcontracting, and Going Alone
Wednesday, February 1, 2023

Nicholas R. Micinski
University of Maine

Migration has become an important area of cooperation within the European Union and has faced several recent refugee crises, including people seeking protection from Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, and Ukraine. This lecture will discuss the ways in which cooperation within the EU has evolved over the last 20 years, focused on the starkly different responses in 2015-17 and 2022.

The lecture will build on the findings in Micinski's book, Delegating Responsibility: International Cooperation on Migration in the European Union (2022).

Recommended Readings:

Europe Today - "21st-Century European Cities: Colonial Modernity, Race and Space"

21st-Century European Cities: Colonial Modernity, Race and Space
Wednesday, January 25, 2023

Giovanni Picker
Glasgow University

This talk builds on Giovanni Picker's three books, one monograph (2017) and two co-edited volumes (2018 and 2022), which investigate the ways in which various racial structures shape 21st-Century European cities. In the first part of the talk, Dr. Picker will discuss the historical canon of Social Science research on European cities, and the canon's silence regarding colonialism and race. In the second part of the talk, Dr. Picker will discuss the residential segregation of Romani people (the Roma) in Europe, as an illustration of the importance of looking at race and colonial history when researching contemporary European cities. He will focus on the city of Florence (Italy), where since the mid-1980s hundreds of Yugoslav Romani families have been forced to live in two peripheral urban camps. In conclusion, Dr. Pickler will connect the first and the second part by showing heuristic correspondences between 20th-century urban governance in colonized cities, and the 21st-century urban governance of marginalized and segregated urban Romani communities.

Giovanni Picker is Assistant Professor of Sociology at Glasgow University (UK). His research and teaching centre on Urban Studies and Race Critical Theories. He is the author of Racial Cities: Governance and the Segregation of Romani People in Urban Europe [Routledge 2017], and co-editor of Racialized Labour in Romania: Spaces of Marginality at the Periphery of Global Capitalism [Palgrave 2018, with Enikő Vincze, Norbert Petrovici, and Cristina Raţ] and European Cities: Modernity, Race and Colonialism [Manchester University Press 2022, with Noa K. Ha]. Updates on his work @ giovannipicker.net.

Europe Today - "Insights into National Landscape after Elections in Czech Republic"

Insights into National and European Political Landscape after Presidential Elections in the Czech Republic
Wednesday, January 18, 2023

Ondřej Horký-Hlucháň
Institute of International Relations Prague, Czech Republic

Senior Researcher at the Centre for Global Political Economy of the Institute of International Relations Prague. He has a PhD in International Economic Relations and a Master’s in International Trade and European Integration from the University of Economics in Prague. Among other positions, he worked as Deputy Director for Research. His professional interests include the governance of global and sustainable development, development cooperation and gender. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), a member of the IIR Board and the president of the IIR’s Trade Union.

Conversations on Europe - Artistic Exploration and Negotiation of Irish Nationalism

Legacies and Manifestations of Irish Nationalism and Irish National Identity in the EU and the UK in the Context of Brexit
Tuesday, January 17, 2023

Ireland’s relationships with Europe have safeguarded features of national identity from the early twentieth century to the present as the region negotiated its long-standing and historically fraught relationship with the United Kingdom.  In recent years, Ireland’s role in the EU has further solidified these regional relationships as a counterpoint to its tangled politics with the UK, especially in complex concepts of national identity in Northern Ireland.  In the midst of ongoing political tumult in the UK and the complexity of Britain’s extraction from the EU through Brexit, what does Irish nationalism look like today north and south of the border? 

This panel was organized and moderated by Professor Jennifer Keating, Department of English, Pitt organized and moderated the panel discussion.

PANELISTS:
Garrett Carr
Seamus Heaney Center, Queen's University Belfast, Northern Ireland

John Carson
Carnegie Mellon University

Mairéad McClean
Artist and Filmmaker, from Bath, England, and Northern Ireland

Eve Patten
Director of the Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin, Ireland

Professor Patten discusses ongoing relationships between the Long Room Hub, its resident artists and scholars and governmental grant programs at Trinity College.  Mairéad McClean discusses her recent Beyond 22 residency supported by the Decade of Centenaries grant to undertake work with the Irish Archives and the Long Room Hub and her exhibition “Here,” at Belfast Exposed in Northern Ireland.  Garrett Carr discusses his book, The Rule of the Land:  Walking Ireland’s Border. Professor Carson provides commentary.

The series is intended to present a broad range of views and opinions about topics relevant to Europe. The views expressed are those of the presenters and cannot be taken to represent the views or opinions of the U.S. Government nor the European Union.

We would appreciate your feedback on these videos and the Conversations on Europe series. Please see our survey at: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/fo...

For more resources and readings related to this session or any of our past sessions, go to: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/esc/events/coe

This video has been funded with the assistance of both the European Commission (through the Erasmus + Programme) and the US Department of Education. The contents of this video are the sole responsibility of the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the U.S. government or the European Union.

Co-support provided by the International Foreign Language Education office of the U.S. Department of Education and the European Commission's Erasmus + Programme. Views and opinions expressed are those of the individual panelists and do not reflect the views or opinions of the U.S. Government or the European Union.

Conversations on Europe: The State of Democracy in Europe

The State of Democracy in Europe
Friday, December 16, 2022

This panel considers several aspects of the current state of democracy in Europe, with special attention to the rise of right-wing populism, illiberal forms of democracy, declining party loyalty, and evidence of increasing disenchantment with the current state of democracy in Europe.  The panel will seek to discuss these issues with the help of a broad comparative and historical perspective.

Professors Mohammed Bamyeh and John Markoff, Department of Sociology, Pitt, organized the panel and Professor Bamyeh moderated it.

PANELISTS:
Timm Beichelt
Professor of Social and Cultural Sciences, Viadrina University, Frankfurt (Oder), Germany

Donatella della Porta
Dean of the Faculty of Political and Social Science, Scuola Normale Superiore, Florence, Italy

Jae-Jae Spoon
Professor of Political Science, University of Pittsburgh

The series is intended to present a broad range of views and opinions about topics relevant to Europe. The views expressed are those of the presenters and cannot be taken to represent the views or opinions of the U.S. Government nor the European Union.

We would appreciate your feedback on these videos and the Conversations on Europe series. Please see our survey at: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/fo...

For more resources and readings related to this session or any of our past sessions, go to: https://www.ucis.pitt.edu/esc/events/coe

This video has been funded with the assistance of both the European Commission (through the Erasmus + Programme) and the US Department of Education. The contents of this video are the sole responsibility of the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the U.S. government or the European Union.

Co-support provided by the International Foreign Language Education office of the U.S. Department of Education and the European Commission's Erasmus + Programme. Views and opinions expressed are those of the individual panelists and do not reflect the views or opinions of the U.S. Government or the European Union.

Insights into European Elections: Sweden, Italy and Denmark

Insights Into European Elections: Sweden, Italy, and Denmark
Wednesday, November 16, 2022

Political scientists from Denmark, Italy, Sweden, and the United States shed light on the results of recent elections in Europe.  This includes discussions on the transformations of European social democratic parties, the rise of right-wing populism, and how these impact European Union politics.

MODERATOR:
Jae-Jae Spoon
University of Pittsburgh

PANELISTS
Andrea Ceron
University of Milan

Timothy Hellwig
Indiana University, Bloomington

Maria Solevid
University of Gothenburg

Rune Stubager
Aarhus University

The series is intended to present a broad range of views and opinions about topics relevant to Europe. The views expressed are those of the presenters and cannot be taken to represent the views or opinions of the U.S. Government nor the European Union.

We would appreciate your feedback on these videos and the Conversations on Europe series.  Please see our survey at: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0x5l0NHN4btbAQR

This video has been funded with the assistance of both the European Commission (through the Erasmus + Programme) and the US Department of Education. The contents of this video are the sole responsibility of the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the U.S. government or the European Union.

Co-support provided by the International Foreign Language Education office of the U.S. Department of Education and the European Commission's Erasmus + Programme. Views and opinions expressed are those of the individual panelists and do not reflect the views or opinions of the U.S. Government or the European Union.

Conversations on Europe: "Business after the Fall: Challenges of East German Companies"

Business after the Fall: Challenges of East German Companies
Tuesday, October 11, 2022

When thinking of German businesses, we usually mean West German ones.  To add nuance to this perspective, this conversation focuses on the East German economy and on a successful East Germany company that had to restart after 1989 when Communism fell and the German government privatized thousands of companies.  While some did not succeed, the numerous stories of those that thrived are often overlooked.

MODERATOR:
Jan Musenkamp
University of Pittsburgh

PANELISTS:
Wendy Carlin
University College of London

Florian Mezger
Carl Zeiss, AG

The series is intended to present a broad range of views and opinions about topics relevant to Europe. The views expressed are those of the presenters and cannot be taken to represent the views or opinions of the U.S. Government nor the European Union.

We would appreciate your feedback on these videos and the Conversations on Europe series.  Please see our survey at: https://pitt.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_0x5l0NHN4btbAQR

This video has been funded with the assistance of both the European Commission (through the Erasmus + Programme) and the US Department of Education. The contents of this video are the sole responsibility of the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh and can in no way be taken to reflect the views of the U.S. government or the European Union.

Co-support provided by the International Foreign Language Education office of the U.S. Department of Education and the European Commission's Erasmus + Programme. Views and opinions expressed are those of the individual panelists and do not reflect the views or opinions of the U.S. Government or the European Union.