Events

The Centre for Global Cooperation Research has continued its now well-established events over the past two years with eight workshops for an academic expert audience, twelve “Käte Hamburger Lectures” and four “Käte Hamburger Dialogues” for the interested public. In addition to the regular research colloquiums, the fellows have also organised numerous “InHouse&Guests” workshops. What follows here is just a small selection of the many events that have taken place.

• In the Käte Hamburger Lectures of 2016 and 2017, which welcomed Ummu Salma Bava, Nikita Dhawan, David Caron and Brian Atwood among the prestigious speakers, the main topics included the financial markets (identities), international justice, the future of development cooperation, and alternative post-colonial concepts of world order.

• The Käte Hamburger Dialogues were dedicated to topical issues such as developments in Syria, climate and migration, but also digital transformation and its implications for policy-making and legitimation issues.

• The Practitioner Seminar Series on the future of climate policy was first launched in 2013 and continued in June 2016 with a third expert workshop. It was attended by a fixed group of delegates from ministries, NGOs and research institutions, who met again on this occasion to discuss the successful Paris climate summit of 2015. Discussion also covered how current geopolitical crises and conflicts will affect climate policy in the coming years. This thematic strand concluded with “Climate Action and Human Wellbeing at a Crossroads: Historical Transformation or Backlash?”, an event held in Königswinter in the immediate run-up to the 23rd UN climate summit. GCR21 was represented on a panel at the event and was involved in its organisation.

• Future scenarios are not only a field of growing academic and research activity but were also a research priority for GCR21 in 2017 and the subject of two major events. The third masterclass, “Future Scenarios of Global Cooperation – Practices and Challenges”, took place in March 2017 at Zeche Zollverein in Essen. The findings of this event have since been published (Future Scenarios of Global Cooperation – Practices and Challenges, Global Dialogues 14, Duisburg 2017). On the subject of “Prospective Migration Policy – Scenario Building on Relations between West Africa and Europe”, GCR21 and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation organised three seminars in Berlin, Dakar and Brussels, at which experts from West Africa, transit countries (Libya, Algeria) and Europe developed four scenarios based on the Shell method. The results were presented for the first time in November 2017 in Brussels and during the 5th African Union-EU summit in Abidjan (Ivory Coast). The results were published as Global Dialogues 15.

• Following positive evaluation, GCR21 was able to redefine the closing conference for the first funding period as a midterm conference. The “Futures of Global Cooperation” conference took place in November 2017 on the premises of the DKM Museum in Duisburg. International experts on the four thematic lines of GCR21’s future research agenda (Pathways, Mechanisms and Trajectories; Polycentric Governance; Critique, Justification and Legitimacy; Competing Conceptions of World Order) talked on the respective panels about the new agenda, the possible details of which were discussed at length in breakout groups. Many former fellows contributed to the event with their commitment and ideas for further networking opportunities.