Ukraine and the Future of Europe

As Ukrainians resist the Russian assault on their country, they speak powerfully of defending the principles and values on which the European project rests, and of Ukraine's place in Europe. The war has opened an opportunity for the European Union to reaffirm its purpose, as not merely an economic union but a normative alliance. Will this moment of European unity and resolve lead to lasting change? What can Ukraine expect from Europe? And what can Europe learn from Ukraine?
Katherine Younger is Permanent Fellow and the Research Director of the Ukraine in European Dialogue Program at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna. She is a historian of modern Europe, with a particular focus on Ukraine and Eastern Europe more broadly. She received her PhD from Yale University in 2018. Both her involvement in Ukraine in European Dialogue and her research are predicated on an awareness that integrating Ukraine into intellectual and public discourse is vital to understanding Europe and the broader world, both historically and in the present.
Timothy Garton Ash is the author of ten books of political writing or ‘history of the present’ which have charted the transformation of Europe over the last half century. He is Professor of European Studies in the University of Oxford, Isaiah Berlin Professorial Fellow at St Antony’s College, Oxford, and a Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University. His essays appear regularly in the New York Review of Books. He writes a column on international affairs in the Guardian which is widely syndicated in Europe, Asia and the Americas.
Ivan Vejvoda, IWM Permanent Fellow and head of Europe’s Futures Program, provided the welcome note.
This event opened the “How Europe Thinks About Itself in a Changing World” conference on 5-6 April 2022 at the Institute for Human Sciences in cooperation with the Dahrendorf Programme at the European Studies Centre of St Antony’s College.
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Europe’s Futures - Ideas for Action is IWM’s strategic partnership initiative with the ERSTE Foundation aiming to understand and address challenges posed to Europe and the European Union by the eroding of democracy, rule of law deficiencies, migratory pressures or climate change.