General Public

Keynote Address of the 5th annual Yale European and Eurasian Studies Graduate Student Conference by Alberto Alemanno, the Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law, HEC Paris (France)

Moderated by Ligia Fabris Campos, the Henry Hart Rice Visiting Professor, Yale University and Assistant Professor at the Law School of Getulio Vargas Foundation (Brazil)

“How to Make Europe a People’s Project?”
After 70 years of unprecedented socioeconomic integration, the EU continues to evolve through processes that largely marginalize citizens’ input. It remains virtually impossible for an EU citizen – not to mention its residents – to express their desire for a change in the Union’s direction and hold its institutions accountable. Yet the question of how would the Union look like if it had put citizens at its centre not margins remains not only unanswered but also unimagined.

Location: Henry R. Luce Hall, Rm 202 / Register to attend on zoom: https://bit.ly/YaleEuropeanGradConf & for complete conference schedule: https://bit.ly/2024-YaleESCGradConf

Bio: Alberto Alemanno is the Jean Monnet Professor of European Union Law at HEC Paris and visiting professor at the College of Europe in Bruges. One of the leading voices on Europe’s democratization, Alberto’s research has been centered on how the law may be used to counter social, health, economic, and political disparities of access within society. Alberto is also permanent visiting professor at the University of Tokyo School of Public Policy. Due to his commitment to bridge the gap between academic research and policy action, Alberto has established The Good Lobby, a nonprofit whose mission is to equalize access to power, by enhancing the advocacy capacity of civil society. Due to his public interest work, he was recognized Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum, Ashoka fellow, Social Innovation Thought Leader by the Schwab Foundation and one of the top 40 influencers in Europe by Politico. Alberto is a regular contributor to Le Monde, The Guardian, Politico Europe, Bloomberg, and Euronews. His first trade book, ‘Lobbying for Change: Find Your Voice to Create a Better Society’, provides a conceptual and do-it-yourself guide enabling ordinary citizens to speak up and inform policy decisions at local, national and international level. Originally from Italy, Alberto is a graduate of Harvard Law School, the College of Europe and holds a PhD in International Law and Economics from Bocconi University. He lives in Bilbao with his three daughters.

Panel Discussion & Reception

Prof. Jan Wouters (Jan Monnet Chair & Professor of International Law, KU Leuven)
Prof. Harold Honkju Koh (Sterling Professor of International Law, Yale Law School)
Consul-General Filip Vanden Bulcke (Belgian Consul-General to NYC, 2022-Present)
Ambassador Dirk Wouters (Belgian Ambassador to the US (2016-2020)
Prof. Susan Rose-Ackerman (Henry R. Luce Professor Emeritus of Jurisprudence, Yale Law School)

Sponsored by:
Yale Law School, European Law Association
European Studies Council, MacMillan Center
America Europe Fund

The RUSSIAN INDEPENDENT MEDIA ARCHIVE is preserving the last two decades of independent Russian journalism, guarding this irreplaceable historical record against erasure as media outlets not aligned with the regime of President Vladimir Putin are shuttered and their reporters and editors cast into exile.

The Russian Independent Media Archive is a project of PEN America, inspired by PEN America Trustee Masha Gessen and made possible with the support of Edwin Barbey Charitable Trust, advised by PEN America Trustee Peter Barbey. PEN America is partnering for this project with The Gagarin Center at Bard College, which has longstanding scholarly engagement with Russia. The project is also collaborating with the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, which contributes to archiving and securing data from Russian media and provides technical consultations. With the support of the Mass Media Defence Center, PEN America, where possible, is entering into licensing agreements with the participating outlets to protect their copyright while the archive serves as a secure home for the content.

Anna Nemzer, journalist, writer, documentary filmmaker, activist. Anna is responsible for the project’s mission and its media partnerships.

Ilia Venyavkin, historian of Soviet and post-Soviet culture, journalist, educational designer, activist. Ilia is responsible for the project’s online and offline events, and for creating a community around the archive.

Lunch @ 12:30 pm ET, Talk @ 1:00 pm
Location: ISPS, Rm A002 lower level, 77 Prospect St.
Part of the European & Russian Studies Community Lunch Seminar Series

Website: https://rima.media/en

Tanya Kotelnykova, Co-Founder and President of Brave Generation and MA student in European, & Russian Studies at Yale University, on “Youth Participation in the Ukrainian Recovery: Experiences from Two Wars in Ukraine”

Lunch @ 12:30 pm ET, Talk @ 1:00 pm
Location: Luce Hall, Rm 202, 2nd fl, 34 Hillhouse Ave.
Part of the European & Russian Studies Community Lunch Seminar Series

In this talk, Tanya will share her personal experiences and talk about the organization she has founded- Brave Generation, as well as explore how people can contribute to Ukraine through the efforts of young individuals.

BIO: Tanya Kotelnykova is currently pursuing an MA in European, & Russian Studies at Yale University. She holds an M.A. in Human Rights from Columbia University and a B.A. in Law from Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. Tanya’s journey began when she was displaced from her home in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 due to the Donbas occupation. In 2022, she was in Kyiv during the city’s encirclement by Russian forces and witnessed the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

Tanya is the founder of Brave Generation, a non-profit organization based in NYC, dedicated to uniting and empowering young Ukrainians for post-war reconstruction. She founded Brave Generation with just $10 in October 2022, shortly after arriving in NYC with a scholarship intended for displaced students. Today, Brave Generation has connected 153 young Ukrainians with Columbia University students. Out of the 44 young Ukrainians who applied to U.S. colleges in 2023, an impressive 37 have been awarded scholarships at institutions such as Columbia, Harvard, Bard College, LSE, and others. These scholarships have provided them with the opportunity to pursue their education away from the war zone. Additionally, the organization has provided essential psychological support to 103 youth affected by war, covered TOEFL exam expenses for 60 individuals, and offered English test preparation to 36 students, empowering more young people to apply to universities for the upcoming fall semester.

Additionally, Tanya serves as a project coordinator at the Boris Nemtsov Foundation for Freedom, where her role involves enhancing democracy promotion workshops, and the Nemtsov forum as well as overseeing the management of the scholarships related to Ukrainian students. Also, Tanya manages the “Ideas for Russia” project, exploring Russia in the era of non-transparency and isolation.

Low levels of social trust are widely seen as an impediment to economic development and social cohesion. Trust is measured mainly via surveys: metrics are used extensively in cross-national studies and percolate back to inform societal debates. However, the way in which trust is empirically approached is subject to two problems: measurement bias and the relation between attitudes and behavior. We address both problems focusing on Greece, currently ranked as one of Europe’s least trusting societies. We do so by using four methods: survey questionnaires, ethnography, trust games, and a field experimental exercise. Our combined findings strongly suggest both measurement bias and a discrepancy between attitudes and behavior. We explain this discrepancy and explore the drivers of trusting behavior. Our findings carry important implications about how we measure, study, and theorize interpersonal trust as well as the practice of assigning a unique trust score to entire societies.

Effrosyni Charitopoulou is a political sociologist. She investigates the dynamics of intergroup relations, focusing in particular on local and refugee interactions. She focuses on modern Greece, using both contemporary and historical case studies, but also on other European countries. Her ongoing book project, Encounters on the Migrant Trail, investigates the ways in which host communities in Greece interacted with asylum seekers in the context of the Syrian refugee crisis. She is also working on projects relating to the legacies of refugee integration as well as state exclusion policies on identity, trust, and social cohesion. She holds a DPhil in Sociology from Nuffield College at Oxford. Her doctoral studies were funded by Nuffield College, the A. S. Onassis Foundation, and the A. G. Leventis Foundation. She is currently a Hannah Seeger Davis Postdoctoral Fellow at Princeton.