Claims to imperial domination seem to have been the motor of countless wars of aggression and acts of mass violence in the longue durée of human history, as seen, for example, in the expansions of the Neo-Assyrian, Roman and European colonial empires. Empires seem to turn violent again in periods of decline when their domination is challenged by geo-political transformations.
While such general tendencies may seem obvious, the contemporary imperial claims of Russia require an in-depth analysis of the relationship between imperial ideologies and acts of mass violence. This challenge is addressed in a transdisciplinary lecture series held at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München and University of Innsbruck, organised in the framework of the research project Discourses of Mass Violence in Comparative Perspective.
Speaker: Prof. Alison Frank Johnson, Ph.D. (Central and Eastern European History, Harvard)
Response: Prof. Dr. Jana Osterkamp (History, Universität Augsburg)
The lecture series is organized by Prof. Dr. Juliane Prade-Weiss (LMU) and Prof. Dr. Dominik Markl (Universität Innsbruck).
You can find more information on the website of the research group.