Andrey Makarychev’s inaugural lecture on biopolitics and regionalism

Andrey Makarychev, Professor of Regional Political Studies of the University of Tartu, will deliver his inaugural lecture “Regionalism: a Biopolitical Perspective” in the White Hall of the UT Museum on 21 October at 16:15.

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 Researcher 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. 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).

This event is organised following the national instructions and the infection safety of participants is checked. Participants must be ready to present a valid health certificate to prove they have been fully 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), along with their ID document.

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

Further information: Andrey Makarychev, Professor of Regional Political Studies, University of Tartu, andrey.makarychev@ut.ee