1501 Neil Avenue, Room 120
Columbus, Ohio 43201
Sponsors: The Global Mobility Project at Ohio State
Podcast Episode: A Chat with Ulf Brunnbauer
OSU EVENT
No other topic currently occupies the public and political mind in Europe as much as migration. In East Central Europe, responses have been particularly forceful. The lack of tolerance and empathy towards migrants might seem strange in view of the fact that East Central European societies have a long history of emigration. In my talk, I will argue that the politics of emigration helps to explain why there is such a close relationship between nationalism and the treatment of migrants. I will go back to the time of overseas emigration in order to trace the longue duree of social fears connected with emigration and the emerging political responses to it. The modern state displays a deeply instrumentalist attitudes towards migrants, whether leaving or entering.
Ulf Brunnbauer is the managing director of the Institute for East and South East European Studies Professor of History of Southeast and Eastern Europe, University of Regensburg.
After receiving his doctorate in history at the University of Graz in 1999 with a thesis on household structures and economics in the Rhodope mountains in the 19th and 20th century. Ulf Brunnbauer moved to the Eastern Institute of FU Berlin in 2003. In 2006 he conducted a study of the communist social policy in Bulgaria from 1944 to 1989, and in 2008 he became the Chair of History Southeastern and Eastern Europe at the University of Regensburg. At that time he also took over the management of the Southeast Institute. Since January 2012, he has been Executive Director of the Institute of East and Southeast European Studies.
Ulf Brunnbauer’s research revolves around the social history of the Balkans in the 19th and 20th centuries with a special emphasis in the historical genealogy and migration history. Moreover, he deals with issues of nation-building, with Muslim minorities in Southeast Europe and the history of historiography in the region.