EU Democratisation and Conflict Resolution Efforts in the Wider Mediterranean

Type: 
Lecture
Audience: 
Open to the Public
Building: 
Nador u. 9, Monument Building
Room: 
Gellner Room
Monday, March 8, 2010 - 9:00am
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Date: 
Monday, March 8, 2010 - 9:00am to 10:00am

Dr. Akcali will begin her lecture by talking about her core research interests including her most recent work and future research plans. Then, as part of her ongoing research, she will give a brief historical background to EUrope’s democratisation and conflict resolution efforts in Turkey, Egypt, Israel-Palestine and Cyprus, and discuss the future role of the EU both as a political and economic anchorage or centre of gravitation in the non-EUropean Mediterranean and as an open-ended cultural and political project. The focus will be on the inherent paradoxes, contradictions and challenges of equating conceptions of the EU as a normative power with EU engagement in the promotion of democracy outside its borders, particularly in the wider Mediterranean, and the ways in which the EU’s initiatives are playing out in the region. In order to emphasize such points, EU democratisation and conflict resolution efforts will be analysed within the general framework of neo-liberal globalisation. Finally, Dr. Akcali will present her teaching contribution and 'fitting' at IRES.

Emel Akcali is a Turkish-Cypriot scholar. She graduated in International Relations at both the American University (Paris, BA) and at the Universite de Galatasaray (Istanbul, MA). She obtained her PhD in Political Geography at the Geography Institute of Paris IV-Sorbonne. She is currently affiliated to the Political Science and International Studies Department of University of Birmingham as an honorary research fellow. Her current research interests are the (trans-)formation of national identities at the age of globalisation, EU democratisation efforts in its periphery, the development of non-Western and alternative globalist geopolitical discourses and ethno-territorial conflicts and their resolution.