This year`s Eilert Sundt Lecturer Kristin M. Bakke is a professor at University College London (UCL) and Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Her research has explored how states respond to opposition groups within their borders, the dynamics of violence in self-determination struggles, post-war state-building and wartime legacies, and geopolitical orientations in Russia’s "near abroad".
Kristin M. Bakke will give the lecture "Geopolitics among ordinary people in Russia’s near abroad".
A common Russian World
Ordinary people in the post-Soviet space have for years fund themselves caught in an information competition over both their geopolitical belonging and memories of their own pasts.
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the ensuing war have highlighted to the world the Russian government’s geopolitical ambitions (and ruthlessness in pursuing them), its efforts to exert control in its "near abroad" through either brute force, as in Georgia in 2008, or soft power mechanism is not new.
Since the mid-2000s, the Russian government has sought to enhance its power not just domestically but also in its ‘near abroad’ by promoting Russkiy Mir, an image of a common "Russian World" with a shared past.
Political elites in some of the former Soviet states have seen these efforts as threatening to their hard-won independence and have sought to distance themselves from both Russia and the Russian-promoted narrative of the past—which may have become ever more salient since Putin invoked World War II when justifying the invasion of Ukraine in 2022. - But what do ordinary people think?
This is the topic(s) for Kristin M. Bakke`s Eilert Sundt Lecture, which will be followed by a panel debate addressing the same issues.
Panel:
- Målfrid Braut Hegghammer, Professor, Department of Political Science (UiO) (Chair)
- Tore Wig, Professor, Department of Political Science (UiO)
- Tor Bukkvoll, Senior Research Fellow, Norwegian Defence Research Establishment
- Geir Flikke, Professor at the Department of Literature. Area Studies and European Languages (UiO)
- Kristin M. Bakke, Eilert Sundt Lecturer and Professor (UCL and PRIO)
We look forward to seeing you!
Kristin M. Bakke is Professor of Political Science and International Relations at University College London (UCL) and Associate Research Professor at the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO). Broadly focused on political violence and its consequences, her research has explored how states respond to opposition groups within their borders, the dynamics of violence in self-determination struggles, post-war state-building and wartime legacies, and geopolitical orientations in Russia’s ‘near abroad’. Her book Decentralization and Intrastate Struggles: Chechnya, Punjab, and Québec was published by Cambridge University Press in 2015 and received the Conflict Research Society’s Book of the Year Award. Her work has also been published in journals such as British Journal of Political Science, International Security, International Studies Quarterly, Journal of Conflict Resolution, Journal of Peace Research, Perspectives on Politics, Political Geography, Security Studies, and World Politics.