Schmidt Speaks at Conference on Power and Governance
Vivien Schmidt, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies at Boston University, delivered a keynote presentation at the sixth conference on “Power and Governance: Forms, Dynamics, Consequences” of the Institute for Advanced Social Research (IASR) at the University of Tampere in Finland from August 27-29, 2018.
The conference explored whether something general can be said about the forms, dynamics and consequences of power. Participants discussed what the alternative ways to approach the issue are and what kind of irreconcilable contradictions there are. They also explored ways to open and promote new and fruitful approaches in the field.
Parallel, open sessions provided the opportunity to discuss versatile topics. Plenary sessions, each with two keynote talks and a related seminar with four papers, covered topics including power relations, global governance, power and knowledge, and critique of power.
Schmidt’s presentation was entitled “Theorizing the Power of Ideas and Discourse in Governance beyond the Nation-State.”
Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration at Boston University. Her research focuses on European political economy, institutions, democracy, and political theory. In 2018, she was appointed as a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor — France’s highest honor. She has published a dozen books, over 200 scholarly journal articles or chapters in books, and numerous policy briefs and comments, most recently on the Eurozone crisis. Her current work focuses on democratic legitimacy in Europe, with a special focus on the challenges resulting from the Eurozone crisis, and on methodological theory, in particular on the importance of ideas and discourse in political analysis (discursive institutionalism). She is a 2018 recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship for a US-EU comparative study of the ‘rhetoric of discontent.’