Events
NIG Colloquium: The Politics and Governance of Administrative Reform in Central and Eastern Europe
The Colloquium aims to bring together a group of NIG scholars from the Netherlands and Belgium to explore and reflect on the politics and governance of administrative reform in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The Colloquium will analyse the role of external, and especially European, forces in driving administrative reforms in CEE, and the mechanisms through which administrative reforms are stimulated through external governance. The role of internal factors, such as the bureaucratic politics of domestic actors, institutional constraints or legacies of the communist regime, in administrative reforms in Eastern Europe is taken into account as well.
The Colloquium will organise workshops at the Universities of Maastricht (The international politics of administrative reform in CEE) and Twente (The domestic politics of administrative reform in CEE), as well as networking events at the Brussels Campus of Maastricht University. It is funded by a Colloquium Grant from the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG) (EUR 10.000, 2011-13).
For additional information, please visit:
http://www.eur.nl/fsw/research/nig/research/colloquia
Organisers: Dr Giselle Bosse (Maastricht) and Dr Veronica Junjan (Twente)
Workshop Soundscapes of the Urban Past
Maastricht University, 30-31 March 2012
Organizers: Prof. Dr. Karin Bijsterveld in collaboration with others.
More information: K. Bijsterveld
Hazardous Chemicals: Agents of Risk and Change (1800-2000)
Deutsches Museum, Munich, Germany, 27-29 April 2012
Chemistry is undoubtedly a science with a great social and economic impact. During the past two centuries millions of new substances have been described, and thousands of them have become novel industrial products. In several cases the scale of production, together with by-products and wastes, has led to previously unknown effects on human health and on the environment. Growing awareness of the impacts of hazardous substances on the economy, society and the environment has stimulated new scientific insights, discussion of risk perception, and new legislation. Advances in analysis and detection of chemicals have played a large role in this respect. Since the 1960s, industrialized countries have adopted a framework for assessing and regulating toxic chemicals that remains in force today. By this means attempts have been made, with varying degrees of success, to control individual pollutants using scientific and technical tools, including risk assessment, toxicological testing, epidemiological investigations, pollution control devices, trace measurements, and waste treatment and disposal technologies.
The present workshop will focus on the interaction between (a) the growing presence of hazardous substances in the economy and the environment, and (b) the cultural, scientific, regulatory and legal responses by modern society to these hazards. In each paper a specific chemical, or group of related chemicals, will take centre stage: from the start of its industrial production, via the proliferation of its uses, and the discovery of its effects on workers, consumers and/or on the biosphere, to attempts to control its emission and use, including the development of alternative products. The workshop will focus in particular on the history of specific chemicals which have had a profound impact on the way in which ecological and health effects have been perceived. Using a ‘biographical approach’ it will trace the entire ‘life history’ (production, use, problems, risk assessment, management strategies, and disposal) of those hazardous substances, culminating at the point at which legislative controls or alternative technical pathways were finally established. The focus will be on the main period of chemical industrialisation (ca. 1800-2000).
Co-organizer: Prof. Ernst Homburg
EPET
Maastricht, 2012
Once a year, the Center for Ethics and Politics of Emerging Technologies (EPET) organizes a scientific conference for all interested scholars. EPET organizes two additional workshops each year for its members. The conference theme of the first International EPET conference, in 2012, is ‘How to imagine techno-moral change?'.
Organizers: Prof. Dr. Tsjalling Swierstra, Dr. Katinka Waelbers, in collaboration with Dr. Marianne Boenink (University of Twente) and Dr. Simone van der Burg (Radboud University Nijmegen).
More information: EPET Conference 2012
