Our Current Moment: Three Perspectives from Three Disciplines
Events
Public Event | 17 June 2026 | 19:00 Tbilisi Time
Ilia State University, Hall G106, G. Tsereteli Entrance N 1-3
Our Current Moment: Three Perspectives from Three Disciplines
Our current moment is characterized simultaneously by fragmentation and convergence. The international order put into place after 1945 and further integrated after the collapse of the USSR is fracturing. At the same time, authoritarianism is on the rise both in the metropole and in the periphery, threatening democratic participation, intellectual freedom, and the institutional autonomy of the university. As often in its history, Georgia appears at once as a peripheral outlier and as a mirror reflecting and refracting much larger processes.
Literary scholar and Russianist Harsha Ram, anthropologist Florian Mühlfried, and political economist Ia Eradze will address the current moment from three perspectives: their geographical location, their institutional affiliation, and their disciplinary training.
Moderator: Luka Nakhutsrishvili
Working language: English | Questions may be asked in Georgian
The public event is part of the three-day international workshop "Modernity and Sovereignties in Georgia," co-organized by the Institute of Social and Cultural Research (Ilia State University), the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies, University of California, Berkeley, and the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS Regensburg).
The event is co-funded by the Institute of Social and Cultural Research (Ilia State University) and the Shota Rustaveli National Science Foundation of Georgia through the Fundamental Research Grant Project "Institutionalizing Modernity in Georgia: At the Juncture of Empire and Periphery."
2026