Annual Conference: Social Policy in East and Southeast Europe
The Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies invites to its 6th annual conference in June 2018 in Regensburg (Germany). The conference is entitled „Social Policy in East and Southeast Europe in Past and Present. Demographic Challenges and Patterns of Inclusion and Exclusion“. Scholars from history, economics and related fields of the humanities and social sciences will present their work to the public.
The concept of social welfare is one of the defining features of modernity in East and Southeast Europe. From the blueprint independent welfare systems established by the nationalising post-imperial states, over the supposedly distinctive social security and redistribution systems under communism to the challenging and economically burdensome post-communist transition, social welfare has come to encompass defining components of state-society relations and human involvement therein. Traditional income maintenance, family and pension policy, as well as healthcare, education and housing programmes all affect societal dynamics in fundamental ways.
The annual conference will take place from Thursday, June 21st to Saturday, June 23rd, 2018 in Regensburg (Germany). The two main fields in focus are the following. First, these are the social policies in response to the demographic dynamics and such challenges as aging, decreasing fertility and migration. The second topic of concern are the patterns of social exclusion and inclusion and related social policies.
The conference will gather an interdisciplinary group of scholars to address, among all, the following domains: family policy; pension policy; income maintenance programmes; poverty reduction; redistribution policies in housing, education and healthcare policies; political, institutional and ideological continuities and transformations.
The conference aims to facilitate a multi-disciplinary dialogue between scholars from history, economics and related fields of the humanities and social sciences. The geographic focus lies on East and Southeast Europe. Keynote speakers include Malgorzata Fidelis (Department of History, University of Illinois, Chicago) and Pieter Vanhuysse (Department of Political Science and Public Management, University of Southern Denmark, Odense).
The Institute invites scholars to submit applications by January 19th, 2018. For more details see: https://www.ios-regensburg.de/veranstaltungen/jahrestagung.html