Andrey Makarychev’s inaugural lecture focuses on the potential of biopolitics for academic regional studies

The inaugural lecture by UT Professor of Regional Political Studies Andrey Makarychev, „Regionalism: a Biopolitical Perspective“, will be delivered on 21 October 2021 at 16:15 in the White Hall of the UT Museum.

The discipline of regional studies has been traditionally known for its focus on geographic and geopolitical factors shaping and delineating political spaces. Within this framework, the concepts of region-making / building, regional integration, and bordering / debordering have been developed and widely applied as research tools. In the meantime, in recent years the discipline opened up to a variety of other approaches and research vistas, from security to cultural studies.

In his inaugural lecture, Professor Makarychev will discuss how different schools of biopolitical scholarship can be integrated into the academic realm of regional studies. He will explain how the concepts of biopolitics and biopower might be innovatively used for studying the politics of spatiality and territoriality, and for analysing the socially constructed geographic spaces. This approach allows looking at human bodies and their lives in conjunction with territorial (geopolitical/geo-cultural/geo-economic) identities, connections and distinctions. References to the author’s empirical research in Ukraine, Estonia, Russia and other countries will illustrate and unpack this argument.

Andrey Makarychev is Professor of Regional Political Studies at the University of Tartu Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies since 2020. He was Guest Professor at Center for Global Politics, Free University in Berlin, and Senior Associate Reseacher with CIDOB think tank in Barcelona. His previous institutional affiliations include George Mason University (US), Center for Security Studies and Conflict Research (ETH Zurich), and Danish Institute for International Studies. Andrey Makarychev teaches courses on "Globalization", "Political Systems in post-Soviet Space", "EU-Russia Relations", "Regional Integration in post-Soviet Space", "Visual Politics", and "The Essentials of Biopolitics". In recent years he co-authored three monographs: Celebrating Borderlands in a Wider Europe: Nations and Identities in Ukraine, Georgia and Estonia (Nomos, 2016), Lotman's Cultural Semiotics and the Political (Rowman and Littlefield, 2017), and Critical Biopolitics of the Post-Soviet: from Populations to Nations (Lexington Books, 2020). He co-edited a number of academic volumes: Mega Events in post-Soviet Eurasia: Shifting Borderlines of Inclusion and Exclusion (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016), Vocabularies of International Relations after the Crisis in Ukraine (Routledge, 2017); Borders in the Baltic Sea Region: Suturing the Ruptures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017). His articles have been published in such academic journals as Geopolitics, Problems of Post-Communism, East European Politics and Societies, European Urban and Regional Studies, among others.

There will be a live webcast of the lecture, which can be viewed on the university’s video portal www.uttv.ee

This event is organised following the instructions by the Government of Estonia and the Estonian Health Board. Before entering the assembly hall, participants of the lecture must present a valid health certificate to prove the person has been vaccinated, recovered from Covid-19 or received a negative test result (a PCR test made by a medical specialist up to 72 hours before the event). Make sure to have an ID document with you. Please do not attend the event if you are ill or have felt ill or been in close contact with someone diagnosed with Covid-19 in the past 14 days.

Further information: Risto Lehiste, Research Communication Specialist, Johan Skytte Institute of Political Studies, risto.lehiste@ut.ee, 737 6584.