Our Fall 2024 Newsletter is Live!

Our Fall 2024 Newsletter is Live!

CES’s Fall 2024 Newsletter is live on our website now! Learn all about our events, research and forthcoming announcements!

Upcoming CES Winter Break Office Closure Dates

The CES offices will be closed for Winter Break from December 23rd-January 3rd. During this time, our email response times will be delayed. We thank you for your patience and wish you a wonderful break. We look forward to seeing you all in the new year!

Ibrahim Muradov

Dr. Ibrahim Muradov joined the University of British Columbia as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in September 2022 and currently serves as a Sessional Lecturer in the Department of Political Science. Dr. Muradov also serves as Head’s Assistant to UBC’s Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies. He served as a faculty member in the Department of International Relations and Audit at Dnipro University of Technology (Ukraine) between 2020 and 2024. He has been directly impacted by Russia’s unprovoked war against Ukraine and, as a displaced scholar, continues his academic research at UBC.

We are on BlueSky!

The Centre for European Studies is now BlueSky!
Follows us @ubceuropeanstudies.bsky.social!

CES Welcomes Visiting Scholar Dr. Renata Faizova

The Centre for European Studies is excited to welcome Dr. Renata Faizova as a visiting scholar for The Centre for European Studies. Dr. Faizova is an expert in international relations, focusing on Central Asia and Eurasian energy politics. Dr. Faizova’s research will focus on energy transition and climate governance during her time at CES.

We look forward to supporting Dr. Faizova in all her impressive research endeavors!

Read more about Dr. Faizova’s research on her profile page.

Renata Faizova

Renata Faizova is an expert in international relations, focusing on Central Asia and Eurasian energy politics. Originally from Eastern Kazakhstan, she earned her PhD in international relations, with a dissertation on Kazakhstan’s foreign policy. Since 2010, Dr. Faizova has been a faculty member at M. Narikbayev University in Astana, Kazakhstan, where she led internationalization programs and conducted research on foreign policy and energy governance in the Eurasian region. In 2019-2020, she served as a visiting scholar at Istanbul University in Türkiye. Dr. Faizova teaches courses on Kazakhstan’s foreign policy, international relations theory, and an introduction to sustainability.

During her tenure as a visiting scholar in the Centre for European Studies (CES) at UBC, Dr. Faizova’s research will focus on energy transition and climate governance.

Contact
renata.faizova@ubc.ca

EDUCATION

PhD, International Relations RUDN University

MA, Sustainability, University of Saskatchewan

MSc Economics, RUDN University

BA, MA, International Relations RUDN University

 

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Politics in Central Asia

Energy Transition

Climate governance

Eurasian region

Turkic Integration

 

CES Welcomes New Affiliate Faculty, Dr. Babak Amini

The Centre for European Studies is excited to welcome Dr. Babak Amini as an affiliated member of The Centre for European Studies. Dr. Amini is an SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Central, Eastern, and Northern European Studies. His research examines the impact of the First World War on the foundations of social sciences. We look forward to supporting Dr. Amini in all his impressive research endeavors!

Find out more about Dr. Babak Amini’s research and at his profile page!

Babak Amini

Babak Amini is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Central, Eastern and Northern European Studies (UBC). His research examines how the theoretical foundations of social sciences were impacted by the First World War (WWI) and the postwar reconstruction process. The research is a critical history of the present insofar as many of the fundamental social scientific notions draw their basic definitions directly from the conceptual framework laid out during these founding years. However, such linkages are often abstracted from the sociopolitical reality within which they were formed and evolved. This project is a careful and systematic retracing of those pathways that lead back to our present conceptions of the social world and political violence. As part of this fellowship, he co-edited (with Thomas Kemple) a special issue of The Journal of Classical Sociology 24(4) which includes his article “Gramsci’s dissidence beneath and beyond the First World War”.

Expanding on his PhD research in comparative historical sociology (London School of Economics), Amini recently published his first monograph, The Making of Council Democracy: State Transformation and Radical Possibilities (Routledge, 2024). The book focuses on state-led mobilization efforts for the war in Germany, Italy, France, and Great Britain, and their distinct consequences for the form of democratic movements and alternative political ideologies in these countries in the immediate post-war years.

His interest in the comparative political history of movements and ideas underpins his work on the global history of Karl Marx’s magnum opus, Capital. The result of this international collaboration will be published as a co-edited book (with Marcello Musto), Routledge Handbook of Marx’s Capital: A Global History of Translation, Dissemination and Reception (Routledge, 2025). The book covers every language in which Capital has ever been translated and interpreted in the last 150 years. The collection also includes his two co-authored chapters that critically examine the history of the dissemination and reception of Capital in Great Britain, the United States, and Canada.

List of Published Work:

Monographs

  • The Making of Council Democracy: State Transformation and Radical Possibilities. London-New York: Routledge, 2024 (85,000 words).

 Edited Books

  • (With Marcello Musto; equal contribution). The Routledge Handbook of Marx’s ‘Capital’: A Global History of Translation, Dissemination and Reception. London-New York: Routledge, 2025 (54 chapters – 450,000 words) (in production).
  • [Under contract for translations into Turkish (Kırmızı Kedi, 2025) and Chinese (CRU Press, 2025)]
  • (With Shaibal Gupta and Marcello Musto; equal contribution). Karl Marx’s Life, Ideas, and Influences: A Critical Examination on the Bicentenary. London: Palgrave, 2019 (xxv + 378pp).
  • The Radical Left in Europe in the Age of Austerity. New York: Routledge, 2016 (xv + 185pp).
  • Edited Special Journal Issues and Symposia
  • (with Rebecca Gordon; equal contribution). “Who is Afraid of Gender? A Symposium.” Contemporary Sociology (manuscript submitted, 2024) (7 contributions; 15,000 words).
  • (with Thomas Kemple; equal contribution). “Social Theorists and the First World War.” Journal of Classical Sociology 24, no. 4 (2024) (12 contributions; 85,000 words).
  • The Radical Left in Europe,” Socialism and Democracy (Routledge) 29, no. 3 (2015) (15 contributions; 178pp).

 Articles in Journals

  • “Antonio Gramsci’s Dissidence Beneath and Beyond the First World War.” Journal of Classical Sociology 24, no. 4 (2024) (7,500 words).
  • (with Thomas Kemple; 2/3 authorship). “Social Theorists in the First World War Era.” Journal of Classical Sociology 24, no. 4 (2024) (4,500 words).
  • “L’odyssée du Capital de Marx en Grande-Bretagne et aux Etats-Unis.” A-M-A’ revue: Contributions à la critique de l’économie politique 4 (2024).

[German translation: Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung 139 (2024).

  • “The Return of Alienation to the Frontiers of Sociological Theory and Practice.” Contemporary Sociology 52, no. 2 (2023): 115-120.
  • “Envisioning Alternatives to Capitalism: On Recent Debates from the Great Recession to the Global Pandemic.” The British Journal of Sociology 73, no. 2 (2022): 470-78.
  • (With Kaitlin Peters and Keyla Amorim; equal authorship). “Bringing Gender to the Forefront of Trade Union Solidarity: A Roundtable with Women Labour Union Leaders around the World.” Critique 46, no. 2 (2018): 307-25.

[Indonesian translation: IndoPROGRESS I, no. 9 (2018)].

  • “A Report on International Conference Series in China.” Marxism21 14, no. 2 (2017): 233-44.

[Chinese translation: Philosophical Trends (2018); Arabic translation: الثقافه الجديده (2017); Spanish translation: Sin Permiso (2017); Indonesian translation: IndoPROGRESS (2017); German translation: Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung 109 (2017)].

  • “A Brief History of the Dissemination and Reception of Marx’s Capital in the US and Britain.” World Review of Political Economy 7, no. 3 (2017): 334-49.

[Indonesian translation: Jurnal Sosialis (2018)].

  • “Scholactivism: A Roundtable Interview with Ricardo Antunes, Pietro Basso, Patrick Bond, Michael Löwy, José Paulo Netto, and Leo Panitch.” Works and Days 33, 34 (2016): 61-92. [Reprinted in Cultural Logic 2017].
  • “The Strength of Our Collective Voice: Views of Labor Leaders from around the World.” Socialism and Democracy 28, no. 2 (2014): 143–65.

[German translation: Zeitschrift Marxistische Erneuerung 101 (2015); Indonesian translation: Indoprogress III, no. 1 (2015); partial Spanish translation: Revista Herramienta 55 (2014)].

Chapters in Books

  • (With Keith Laybourn; equal authorship). “Great Britain.” In The Routledge Handbook of Marx’s ‘Capital’: A Global History of Translation, Dissemination and Reception, edited by Marcello Musto and Babak Amini. London-New York: Routledge (forthcoming; 2025) (15,000 words).
  • (With Peter Hudis; equal authorship). “United States and Canada.” In The Routledge Handbook of Marx’s ‘Capital’: A Global History of Translation, Dissemination and Reception, edited by Marcello Musto and Babak Amini. London-New York: Routledge (forthcoming, 2025) (16,300 words).
  • “The French Edition of Capital in Germany, France, Anglophone Countries, and Japan.” In Marx and Le Capital: Evaluation, History, Reception, edited by Marcello Musto. London-New York: Routledge, 2022, pp. 204-24.
  • “On the Notion of “Workers’ Control” in Marx and Marxists (1871-1917): A Survey.” In Karl Marx’s Life, Ideas, and Influences: A Critical Examination on the Bicentenary, edited by Shaibal Gupta, Marcello Musto, and Babak Amini. London: Palgrave, 2019, pp. 121-58.
  • “Situating the Radical Left in Contemporary Europe.” In The Radical Left in Europe in the Age of Austerity, edited by Babak Amini, New York: Routledge, 2016, pp. 7-24.
  • “A Chronology of the European Sovereign Debt Crisis.” In The Radical Left in Europe in the Age of Austerity, edited by Babak Amini. New York: Routledge, 2016, 166-78.

Book Reviews

  • Marcello Musto (ed.), Rethinking Alternatives with Marx: Economy, Ecology and Migration. Critical Sociology 48, no. 4-5 (2022): 1-3.
  • James Muldoon (ed.) Council Democracy: Towards a Democratic Socialist Politics. LSE Review of Books (2019).
  • Dario Azzellini, Communes and Workers’ Control in Venezuela: Building 21st Century Socialism from Below. Socialism & Democracy 32, no. 2 (2018): 146-49.
  • Paolo Chiocchetti, The Radical Left Party Family in Western Europe, 1989-2015. New Political Science 39, no. 3 (2017): 424-26.
  • Imannuel Ness, Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class. Science and Society 81, no. 3 (2017): 457-60.
  • Marcello Musto (ed.), Workers Unite! The International 150 Years Later. Rethinking Marxism 28, no. 2 (2016): 322-24.
  • Agamenon R. E. Oliveira, A History of the Work Concept: From Physics to Economics. Advances in Historical Studies 4, no. 4 (2015): 336-37.
  • Luciana Castellina, Discovery of the World: A Political Awakening in the Shadow of Mussolini. Socialism and Democracy 29, no.2 (2015): 151-55.

CES Graduate and Undergraduate Fellowship Applications are Open!!

Applications for our CES Fellowships are live! Winners receive a $500 stipend, a shared workstation in the Centre for up to one month of WT2024 T2, and the opportunity to share their research findings with the broader UBC community!

Find more information about undergraduate fellowships here.

Find more information about the graduate fellowships here.

 

Applications close on November 18, 2024, at 5PM.

Affiliate Research Features!

Promote your current research with a CES research feature! Affiliates are encouraged to submit projects, papers, presentations, or seminars to showcase their academic output, public outreach, and other work focusing on European studies to the Centre!

CES staff will promote your work on our social media (Instagram and X) to highlight its incredible impact on UBC, the wider Vancouver community, and beyond!

Submit your requests here.