LSC Annual Conference 2026 | In/ter/dependence: Transitions of Power, Frictions of Freedom
17-19 June 2026 | Programme outlined below
- Download the programme here | Or find the full programme in the tabs below
- The conference organizers are: Ulf Brunnbauer, Carmen Dexl, Birgit Hebel-Bauridl and Paul Vickers.
- The Leibniz ScienceCampus 2026 Annual Conference is supported by the Hans Vielberth Regensburg University Foundation. We are grateful for the additional financial support. The event is organized in cooperation with the Regensburg European American Forum (REAF), with support from the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS).
- Thank you to the conference support tam Rye Bittl, Sabine Kirmayer, Emily van Bergeyk and Katharina Nagel at REAF, Christoph Kulzer and Elena Goldhofer at the ScienceCampus, and Lois Ring and Barbara Stupka at IOS for their support
July 4, 2026, marks 250 years since the American Declaration of Independence. This anniversary provides an opportunity to examine critically how independence movements have functioned historically and continue to operate today. While the 1776 Declaration promised liberty, it excluded women, Indigenous peoples, and the enslaved from its vision of freedom. This conference uses the anniversary as a point of departure to explore how independence and interdependence are deeply entangled phenomena. From the American Revolution to the emergence of new states after the fall of empires and the end of communism in Europe, moments of national sovereignty have produced new forms of dependence and exclusion. We will examine these dynamics in Europe, the Americas, and beyond, investigating how struggles for self-determination intersect with other axes of power including gender, race, and class, from the late eighteenth century to the present.
Programme Overview
Full programme is outlined below
Wednesday 17 June | H24 at University of Regensburg
- 16:00 Registration
- 16:30 Welcoming Addresses
- 17:00 Keynote Lecture by Mita Banerjee (Mainz) Successful Aging? Looking at America at 250 through the Gated Retirement Community “The Villages,” Florida
- 18:30 Roundtable Discussion | The (In)Dependence of Knowledge? Academic Freedom Today
- Marie Beyrich (Regensburg), Ulf Brunnbauer (Regensburg), Marike Janzen (Kansas), Livia de Souza Lima (Regensburg), Marta Vicente (Kansas) | Chaired by Ben Chappell (Kansas)
Thursday 18 June | Room 319, IOS, Landshuter Str. 4
- 09:30 - 16:30 Panels
- 17:00 Keynote Lecture by Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (Indiana University, Bloomington) “Dangerous Characters”: Black Women, Constructions of Freedom, and White Violence in the Post-Civil War South
Friday 19 June | Room 319, IOS, Landshuter Str. 4
- 09:30 - 14:45 Panels
Conference Programme
16:00-16:30 Registration – including coffee and snacks
16:30-17:00 Welcome Addresses
President of the University of Regensburg – Prof. Dr. Udo Hebel
LSC Speaker, IOS Director and Conference Co-Organizer – Prof. Dr. Ulf Brunnbauer
Co-Organizers: Dr. Birgit Hebel-Bauridl, Dr. Carmen Dexl, Dr. Paul Vickers
Keynote Lecture 1 | 17:00-18:15
Mita Banerjee (Mainz) | Successful Aging? Looking at America at 250 through the Gated Retirement Community “The Villages,” Florida
Chair: Carmen Dexl
Short Break
18:30-19:45 | Roundtable: The (In)Dependence of Knowledge? Academic Freedom Today
Chair: Ben Chappell (Kansas)
- Marie Beyrich (UR)
- Ulf Brunnbauer (UR/ IOS)
- Marike Janzen (Kansas)
- Marta Vicente (Kansas)
- Livia de Souza Lima (UR)
Reception
Thursday, 18 June 2026 | 319 Altes Finanzamt
Panel 1 | 09:30-10:30 | Global Echoes of US Independence
Bruno Santos Cunha (Recife) | The American Revolution in the South Atlantic: Echoes of the American Revolution in Brazilian Constitutional thought (1776-1891)
Debidatta Aurobinda Mahapatra (Jacksonville) | The American and the Indian Experiences in Independence: Drawing Parallels
Chair: Alexandra Rahr (Toronto)
Coffee Break
Panel 2 | 11:00-12:30 | Institutionalizing Independence and Interdependence
Bharti Chhibber (Delhi) | Negotiating Freedom: Women's Movements and Gendered Agency in Postcolonial India
Keith Brown (Arizona State U) | Civic horizons: Citizen-diplomacy and Transnational Mutuality in an Age of Great Power Rivalries
Kamil Kowalski (Lodz) | Interdependence Codified: Labour Law and the Institutionalization of Capital-Labour Relations in Industrial America (1865-1948)
Chair: Paul Vickers (Regensburg)
Lunch
Panel 3 | 13:30-15:00 | Dependence and Independence: Gender, Whiteness, and Power in the U.S.
Mary Cathryn Cain (Georgia, USA) | “I Hate to Be Dependent”: Women, Whiteness and the Legacy of the American Revolution
Nicole Mayberry (Arizona State U) | When the Map is Denied: White Nationalist Backlash and the Re-Cartography of Subordination
Irina Rabinovich (Tel Aviv) | ‘For the Greater Good’: Gendered Dependence and State Power in the American Eugenics Movement
Chair: Rye Bittl (Regensburg)
Coffee Break
Panel 4 | 15:30-16:30 | Contested Self-Determination in the Twilight of Empire
Jeffrey Veidlinger (Ann Arbor) | Autoemancipation and Self-Determination: Jewish Autonomy and National Sovereignty in the Twilight of Empire, 1903-1919
Lida-Marie Dodou (Yale) | Whose Independence? Class, Ethnicity, and Competing Visions for Salonika's Future, 1912-1913
Chair: Sabine Koller (Regensburg)
Drinks Break
Keynote Lecture 2 | 17:00-18:30
Amrita Chakrabarti Myers (Bloomington, Indiana) | “Dangerous Characters”: Black Women, Constructions of Freedom, and White Violence in the Post-Civil War South
Chair: Birgit Hebel-Bauridl
19:30 Dinner – self-pay
Friday, 19 June | 319 Altes Finanzamt
Panel 5 | 9:30-10:30 | Energy, Sovereignty, and Interdependencies
Silvia Gerlsbeck (Kaiserslautern-Landau) | Infrastructures of In/Dependence: Petro-Modernity and Postcolonial Sovereignty in Contemporary Trinidadian Fiction
Cornelia Sahling (Trento) | The Geoeconomics of Nuclear Dependence: Energy Politics and Power Consolidation in Belarus
Chair: Anne Brüske (Regensburg)
Coffee break
Panel 6 | 11:00-12:00 | Seeking Independence, Claiming Statehood
Robert Austin (Toronto) | What Makes a Para-State a State?
Rahim Rahimov (Baku) | Solidarity for independence but without interdependence? A strategic friction in different temporal and spatial contexts
Chair: Elia Bescotti (Regensburg)
Lunch
Panel 7 | 13:00:-14:30 | Frictions of Freedom and Projections of Power
Philip Egbule (Abuja) | Justifying Protection beyond Borders: In/dependence, Interdependence, and U.S. Policy Responses to Alleged Anti-Christian Violence in Nigeria
Avan Fata (London) |Imperialism by Other Means? Anglo-American Strategy and the Establishment of the United Nations Trusteeship Council
Olena Romanova (Kyiv) | Temporary Europeans: The paradox of conditional freedom in an era of military turbulence
Chair: Claudia Sadowski-Smith (Arizona)
14:30-14:45 Concluding Discussion
Ulf Brunnbauer, Carmen Dexl, Birgit Hebel-Bauridl, Paul Vickers