Civil Sphere Theory Conference Explores Central and Eastern Europe’s Democratic Challenges
The international conference “The Civil Sphere in Central and Eastern Europe” took place on 30 June–1 July 2025 at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. Co-organized by Nadya Jaworsky (Masaryk University Brno) and Susann Worschech (European University Viadrina), the event gathered scholars from across the world to examine civil, uncivil, and noncivil dynamics in post-socialist societies. The result will be an edited volume entitled Post-Transformation and the Civil Sphere in Central and Eastern Europe, to be published in 2026 by Palgrave MacMillan, with Jeffrey Alexander, Nadya Jaworsky and Susann Worschech as editors.
Over two days, participants discussed topics such as democratic backsliding, moral polarization, collective memory, and civil resilience. Jeffrey Alexander (Yale University) delivered a keynote lecture on "Can Civil Peace Extend beyond the Nation State? Europe, NATO, and the U.S. in the Shadow of the Russia-Ukraine War."
The conference featured ten presentations spread across five thematic panels:
Dominik Zelinsky (Slovak Academy of Sciences): From Civil Brothers to Uncivil Others. Civility and Orientalism in Czech Perception of Slovak Political Crisis
Ivana Spasić & Milica Resanović (University of Belgrade): The Polluting Colony: The Uses of Postcolonial Argument in Present-Day Serbia
Werner Binder (Masaryk University Brno): Transformation and its Discontents: Civil Sphere, Incorporation and Collective Identity in Post-Socialist East Germany
Monika Verbalyte (European University Flensburg): Polarisation, Moral Binaries and Emotions in Post-transformation Societies: The Case of Lithuania
Murad Nasibov (Justus-Liebig University of Giessen): From Ideals to Reality: Civil Society Autonomy under Authoritarian Rule
Ewa Zielińska & Paulina Pospieszna (Adam Mickiewicz University Poznań): Deliberative Innovations and the Civil Sphere: Insights from Polish Climate Movements
Ruslan Zaporoshchenko (Karazin Kharkiv National University, online): Metamorphoses of Civil Solidarity in Wartime: Ukraine and the Dynamic Civil Sphere
Till Hilmar (University of Vienna): Societalizing the Energy Crisis: How Germany and Austria’s Far Right Delegitimised Support for Ukraine after February 24, 2022
Ana Velitchkova (University of Mississippi): Surva Winter Carnivals: Including Rurality into the Bulgarian, the European, and the Global Civil Spheres
Jan Váňa (Masaryk University Brno): Literature in Dialogue with the Civil Sphere: (De)Constructing Historical Continuity in Post-Soviet Czechoslovakia
The event also included a historical-sociological city tour of Frankfurt (Oder) and Słubice led by Werner Benecke, and concluded with a panel discussion on Civil, uncivil, and noncivil spheres in Europe and North America – theoretical perspectives and future tasks featuring Nadya Jaworsky, Giuseppe Sciortino (University of Trento), Mykhailo Minakov (European University Viadrina), and Jason Mast (Goethe University Frankfurt).
