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Logo credits to Jeroen Moes & Inge Melchior

CERiM Central and Eastern Europe hub (CEEhub)

Grounded knowledge for challenging times 

The CERiM Central and Eastern Europe hub (CEEhub) brings together research, outreach and education on Central and Eastern Europe at Maastricht University.

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LinkedIn

Bluesky

YouTube

On this page, you can discover our key areas of expertise, find news from the CEEhub, and meet our affiliated staff members. Scroll down for all this and more!

Voor de Nederlandstalige website, klik hier.

  • Discover our key areas of expertise

    Democratic resilience and autocratisation

    Central and Eastern Europe has experienced complex processes of democratization and some of the sharpest turns to autocracy in contemporary times, emerging as a battleground for the future of democracy in Europe. This area of expertise studies patterns of autocratization and identifies sources of democratic resilience in an era of contestation and violent conflicts. 

    Flows and connectivity

    The relationships among Central and Eastern European countries and with the rest of the world have been shaped by their efforts to navigate changing global orders and power structures and to connect to different communities and places. This area of expertise investigates the movement of knowledge, ideas, goods, resources, capital, and people within the CEE space and to and from it, across sectors such as energy, digital and finance. 

    European integrations and EU enlargement

    Since the end of the Second World War, Central and Eastern European states have actively participated in and shaped various forms of institutionalized European cooperation. Most recently, the European Union’s eastern enlargements have had a significant impact on European integration processes and are likely to continue doing so in the near future. How Central and Eastern European states have imagined, shaped, and influenced European integrations and how to prepare for future rounds of EU enlargement are key questions that this area of expertise explores.

    Memory politics and identity

    How history is interpreted has high political stakes in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond, which results in heated contests over questions of identity and belonging. This area of expertise focuses on the most contested issues in memory politics, such as the socialist past and competing national projects, and how contemporary political subjectivities are being reshaped. 

    • News from CEEhub

      Find your latest news from CEEhub here!

    • CERiM Central and Eastern Europe hub (CEEhub) launch event highlights threats to academic freedom

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      On 15 May, we celebrated the launch of the CERiM Central and Eastern Europe hub (CEEhub) at Maastricht University with a thought-provoking afternoon. In her keynote lecture “What is antiliberal politics, and what can academics do about it?” Professor Andrea Pető (Central European University) presented an urgent and insightful overview of the present dangers facing academic freedom. 

      In her address, Prof Pető underlined the threat that anti-liberal governments pose to academia, especially in the humanities and social sciences. In addition to attacks aimed at particular academic disciplines, such as gender studies, anti-liberal governments seek to reshape how research and higher education institutions operate. Pető referred to this phenomenon as the “Polypore illiberal state”: the setting up of parallel institutions that, at first glance, appear to function similar to established academic institutions yet, in fact, serve political objectives and erode core values such as academic freedom, scientific rigor, and free debate. 

      Drawing on the experience of the Central European University, which was forced to relocate from Budapest to Vienna, Pető showed how illiberal governments seek to curtail the independence and critical role of research and education. In the case of Hungary, this process included changes in higher education laws, the dissolution of university departments, as well as the transformation of programs that were deemed too critical into something “more suitable” (e.g., transforming gender studies into “family studies”). Her lecture underlined how these shifts can be gradual and subtle, which makes them more difficult to detect and resist; they are expressed in administrative reorganizations, safety speak, or budgetary decisions and, over time, permeate all scientific fields, including Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM). Within the context of this “illiberal pragmatism,” the availability of resources and institutions becomes leading, rather than a commitment to academic freedom and truth-seeking. 

      What can academics do about the threat anti-liberal politics poses to academic freedom? Prof Pető called on academics not to remain passive and outlined concrete courses of action: 

      • To invest in self-organization to defend academic institutions against anti-liberal attacks 

      • To participate in the public arena and write and publish in accessible ways to engage with the general public 

      • To make use of the opportunities provided by traditional and social media 

      • To strengthen ties with students. 

      The keynote lecture was followed by a panel discussion on the opportunities and challenges in researching Central and Eastern Europe today. The interdisciplinary panel included CERiM CEEhub experts Prof. Adriana Iamnitchi (Computational Social Science, UM) and Dr. Gergana Noutcheva (International Relations, UM), along with Dr. Tetyana Lokot (Digital Media and Society, Dublin City University), and was moderated by Dr. Mariëlle Wijermars (Internet Governance, UM). The speakers emphasized the need to push back against the persistent view of Central and Eastern Europe as the ‘post-Soviet bloc’ and, instead, develop more fine-grained understandings of the diversity of its societies and democratic paths. They also emphasized the importance of digital technologies and online media in contemporary societal and political processes and the limitations of concepts developed based on American and West-European cases in capturing these processes. Finally, the speakers called for greater recognition of knowledge production by scholars in and from Central and Eastern Europe. 

      We thank Professor Andrea Pető, the panel speakers and the members of the audience for the inspiring discussions! Follow CERiM CEEhub on LinkedIn or Bluesky to stay informed about upcoming activities. 

    • Videos

      Meet Dr Brigitte le Normand, CERiM CEEhub expert on socialist Yugoslavia

      Meet Dr Gergana Noutcheva, CERiM CEEhub expert on comparative democratisation of Eastern Europe

      Meet Dr Inge Melchior, CERiM CEEhub expert on Estonian memory politics

      Meet Dr Aneta Spendzharova, CERiM CEEhub expert on financing the EU green transition

      Meet Dr Ferenc Laczó, CERiM CEEhub expert on the political history of Hungary

      Meet Wicke van den Broek, CERiM CEEhub PhD candidate in EU democracy promotion

    • Past CEEhub events

      CEEhub launch event 15 May 2025

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      Jean Monnet Lecture Professor Milada Anna Vachudova - 28 May

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