Two UW Adjunct Faculty Members to Present International Research in Centennial Aug. 19

Two scholars from Germany, who also are adjunct professors at the University of Wyoming, will present “The World Minus the U.S.?” as part of the Centennial Speaker Series Wednesday, Aug. 19, from 4:30-6 p.m. in the Centennial Library, located at 27 Second St. in Centennial.

The speaker series, hosted by UW’s Center for Global Studies (CGS) and the Centennial Library, brings international concerns and discussions to the southeast Wyoming community.

 

Tanja Börzel, a professor of political science and the chair for European integration at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science at Freie Universität Berlin in Germany, and Thomas Risse, a retired professor of international relations at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, are the speakers.

 

The talk will consist of two parts. The first part will cover the history of U.S. foreign policy of the past 250 years, arguing that the U.S. only became a world power during and after World War II. While the U.S. was very significant in setting up and anchoring the rule-based international order -- or liberal international order -- this order had many other authors, including countries from the Global South.

 

Moreover, U.S. multilateralism always has been ambivalent, with many unilateralist impulses during the past 80 years, according to a summary the speakers provided about their scheduled talk.  Now, the U.S., under the Trump administration, seems to have left the rule-based order for good. Does this mean that the world is crumbling toward a “dog-eat-dog” world of chaos and anarchy? The speakers don’t think so and will show this during the second part of the talk.

 

Börzel received her Ph.D. from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, in 1999. From 1999-2004, she conducted her research and taught at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in Bonn, the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and the University Heidelberg, all in Germany. She is the director of the Cluster of Excellence “Contestations of the Liberal Script.”

 

Her research focus and teaching experience lie in the field of institutional theory and governance, European integration and comparative politics, with a focus on Western and Southern Europe. She mainly concentrates on questions of institutional change as a result of Europeanization as well as on the diffusion of European ideas and policies within and outside of the European Union. 

 

Risse received his M.A. from Bonn University and his Ph.D. from the University of Frankfurt, Germany. He has taught in the U.S. at Cornell, Yale, Stanford and Harvard universities as well as UW. In Europe, he has taught at the University of Konstanz, Germany and the European University Institute in Florence, Italy.

 

Until the beginning of 2022, he was professor of international relations and director of the Center for Transnational Relations, Foreign and Security Policy at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science. He chairs the academic advisory board of the German Council on Foreign Relations. In 2003, Risse was awarded the Max Planck Research Prize for International Cooperation. In 2021, he was honored with the Juan Linz Prize by the International Political Science Association.

Börzel and Risse, who are married, have been running the final Centennial Speaker Series talk each summer for several years and are well-respected members of the Centennial community.

A barbecue will follow the presentation. All are welcome.

 

About the UW Center for Global Studies

The CGS is a core unit of WyoGlobal and is the go-to resource on the UW campus for global success. CGS supports students, faculty, communities and businesses in generating internationally engaged research, teaching and program opportunities. With an array of fellowships, grants, awards, partnerships and events, CGS cultivates effective collaboration between Wyoming and the world.

For more information, email cgs@uwyo.edu.