The Center for European Studies at the University of Michigan is pleased to announce that Philipp Ther will deliver the Annual Distinguished Lecture on Europe entitled, “Mass Flight from and in Ukraine: A Game Changer in International Refugee and Migration History?” The lecture will be on Monday, December 4, 2023 from 4:00-5:30 PM in 1010 Weiser Hall, 500 Church Street, Ann Arbor, MI 48109. The event is free and open to the public.
In the lecture, Ther will look at the ongoing Ukrainian refugee crisis as it relates to other modern mass migrations and their impacts on refugee politics and international law. Ther will analyze who was accepted as a refugee over time and who was not, and how Ukrainian refugees have been received since the beginning of the second Russian-Ukrainian War. He will also examine the dialectic between humanitarian and utilitarian refugee politics, and why countries of origin are usually set aside once the mass flight has occurred and play only a minor role in migration history, arguing that the return of refugees and other ways to strengthen human capital should be a major consideration in the case of Ukraine.
Philipp Ther is professor of Central European history at the University of Vienna, where he founded the Research Center for the History of Transformations (RECET). Five of his monographs have been published in English: Europe since 1989: A History (Princeton UP); The Dark Side of Nation States: Ethnic Cleansing in Modern Europe (Berghahn Press); Center Stage: Operatic Culture and Nation Building in 19th Century Central Europe (Purdue UP); The Outsiders: Refugees in Europe since 1492 (Princeton UP); and How the West Lost the Peace. The Great Transformation since 1989 (Polity Press). In 2019 he was awarded the Wittgenstein Prize by the Austrian Research Fund, the highest recognition for scientists in Austria.
Contact: Małgorzata Kowalczyk | gosiak@umich.edu | 734.764.0351
The Center for European Studies (CES), a constituent of the International Institute and the Weiser Center for Europe and Eurasia, is a multi-disciplinary research, education, and outreach program dedicated to improving understanding of modern, integrated Europe at the University of Michigan (U-M). In collaboration with academic and research units across U-M, CES offers an array of public programs, funding opportunities, and innovative curricular outreach on Europe. For more information, visit ii.umich.edu/ces.
