IGSD News

Dr. Vangelis Pitidis attended the European Urban Resilience Forum (EURESFO) 2025, in Rotterdam from 25–27 June. As a leading expert in urban resilience and territorial governance, with experience in leading project in Latin America, Africa and particularly Europe, Dr Pitidis had a chance to meet city representatives, academics and other urban practitioners and discuss teh progress of urban resilience as well as the that need to be addressed in order to consolidate and promote it aross Europe. Hi attendance provided a strategic opportunity to strengthen IGSD’s presence within key European policy networks, such as the ones represented in EURESFO 2025, jointly organised by ICLEI Europe and the European Environment Agency. The event has been truly informative, including keynote speeches, mobile workshops and knowledge exchange events and has been a a great success!

Warwick hosted the Sustainability Network Studio on 3-5 June, an international event to facilitate the formation of interdisciplinary research collaborations in and around the area of Sustainability between researchers at three universities: Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB) from Belgium; Technische Universitat Dresden (TUD) from Germany and the University of Warwick.

The event was organised as part of the EUTOPIA activities and under the aegis of the Sustainability Spotlight. It was led Prof. Elena Korosteleva in her capacity as Chair of the Sustainability Spotlight, and in partnership with the Sustainability Spotlight leadership team. The event was held over the three days, involving members of the Sustainability Spotlight networks. It was based around pitch presentations from each of the 23 researchers attending and consortium-building for European research funding. The event was facilitated by research support staff from each of the three institutions and is expected to lead to new research collaborations in and around the sustainability area in disciplines ranging from chemistry and engineering to political science, business and economics. From the Warwick team, it included Prof. Stuart Coles (WMG), Prof. Stefan Bon (Chemistry), Dr Fred Dahlmann (WBS), Dr Soroush Abolfani (Engineering), Dr Madeleine Fagan (PAIS), Dr Lory Barile (Economics), Dr Feng Mao (IGSD) and Dr Adela Glyn-Davies (Design).

This forum critically reflects on the democracy support agenda and its future in light of the wars in Gaza and Ukraine, the decline of Western political and normative dominance, and overall global democratic backsliding. It finds that these wars appear systemic in the sense that they sharpen already existing crises in world order. They have evidenced a structural weakness in the international liberal order (ILO) and also intensified practices of competitive norms promotion at the global level, with Russian norms promotion in particular scoring some successes in South America, North Africa, and Southeast Asia. Taken together, these phenomena have allowed autocratic tendencies to gain strength globally, from the Mediterranean to Southeast Asia to Europe and the Americas. At the same time, democracy is also becoming more locally and regionally driven and diverse and might thus possibly become more resilient. In this new world in the making, Western democracy supporters will need to respect the unique historical and cultural contexts that have shaped democracies around the world and become more humble, inclusive, and dialogic with non-Western democratic middle powers such as South Africa and Brazil.

On 27 March 2025 the SHAPEDEM-EU project had its Steering Group meeting to discuss the results and findings of individual Work Packages and plan the remaining 6 months of the project. WP2, led by Prof. Korosteleva and Dr Asya Kudlenko, was proud to report that all its deliverables have been either met or on track to be met for their respective deadlines.

Professor Korosteleva was invited to contribute a piece on resilience to the strategic volume of Key Concepts for the Future of the EU, published by the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies (SIEPS), 3 March 2025. The volume came together at the request of policy-makers, and covers key themes that the EU and global leadership will work with in 2025+, including geopolitics, resilience, security, democracy etc. It offers innovative and creative perspectives, to ensure that the challenges posited by complex geopolitics and the Anthropocene, are adequately considered, going forward. It is available for a free download.