Coming Together and Growing Apart: A Decade of Transformation in the South Caucasus

CRRC is excited to announce its 6th Methods Conference, which will be held on June 26-27 and open to public viewing over Facebook and direct participation through signing up here. The conference focuses on a decade of change in the region.

The last decade has seen broad political, economic, and social changes across the South Caucasus. In the previous ten years, events including Armenia’s 2018 ‘Velvet Revolution,’ the 2016 ‘Four-Day War’ in Nagorno-Karabakh, the region’s first ballot box-driven change in government in the 2012 Georgian parliamentary elections, the devaluation of the national currency in Azerbaijan, and volatility in relations between the European Union and Russia have reshaped the region. Such events have raised questions as to whether the three nations of the South Caucasus are growing increasingly apart, and if so, whether these changes reflect substantial divergence among societies or if they are simply an outcome of the interests of national elites.

The conference this year will contain five panels addressing these questions, two keynote addresses, and two roundtables.

Keynotes

Professor John O’Loughlin of the University of Colorado Boulder will discuss and Professor Julie George of Queens College and City University of New York will each deliver keynote addresses.

Panels

The conference will open with a panel on the results of the 2019-2020 Caucasus Barometer surveys in Armenia and Georgia, with papers presented on changes in trust towards institutions in Armenia following the Velvet Revolution, the Church’s scandals in Georgia as well as support for democracy and liberal values. 

The conference’s second panel focuses on memory, rites, identities, and values in the South Caucasus, and includes papers on language policies in the post-Soviet space, places of ritual and monuments in Armenia, and theoretical aspects of the World Values Survey. 

The third panel will discuss the political economy of transition, including papers on reforming governance in Georgia and Ukraine, how mining activities affect public health, energy markets in the post Covid world, and gig workers in the Georgian economy.

The theme of the fourth panel is democracy, parties, and civil society. Presentations will span issue such as Pashinyan versus the Karabakh Clan, national sovereignty with and without nationalism, and election monitoring in Georgia.

The final panel of the conference will focus on nationalism, with papers on Abkhazian nationalism, Georgian public opinion on conflict resolution in Georgia, social norms and human rights in Azerbaijan, and  how narrative, memory, and identity shape conflict in the South Caucasus. 

Roundtables

Aside from the conference’s keynotes, there will also be two round tables. The first will focus on challenges to the social sciences in the South Caucasus, while the second will explore issues surrounding data collection in light of Covid 19.

A sneak peak of the conference in the form of the conference’s abstract book is available here. 

The conference will start at 11:00 AM Georgia time on June 26 and 11:45 on June 27. To join us for the conference as an audience member, sign up here and to watch the conference during the event, visit our Facebook page.