Summer opportunity: SEGGAU | GUSEGG 2023 | Leibnitz, Austria

KU Jewish Studies & Graz International Summer School will offer an opportunity to study in Leibnitz, Austria from July 2 - July 15, 2023. The deadline to apply is January 31, 2023. Scholarships are available for those who qualify!

To learn more please visit the website linked here: Graz International Summer School Seggau

Conflict, Challenge, and Change: State – Society – Religion

GUSEGG 2023 will offer a discussion on how conflict, challenge, and change determine our lives as individuals and as a society. Our times are marked by various conflicts and antagonisms arising from challenging circumstances: climate change, war, inequality, poverty, hunger, pandemics. The problems faced today are conceived of in different ways: as unexpected tragedies, as predictable outcomes of past behavior,
as the result of systematic and structural processes, or as the consequence of individual actions or even chance. It is a constant challenge to attempt to resolve tensions and antagonisms without multiplying and escalating them. If conflict is a challenge and a question, change is the answer.

However, dialogue between the past and the present must continue as the basis of a democratic ideal, as silence as an alternative would not signal the end of all conflicts, but the end of a democratic way of dealing with them. Therefore, creative transformation processes are necessary to meet the various challenges faced. Thus, GUSEGG 2023 will present research on how conflict, challenge, and change are addressed socially, politically, culturally, and economically, and what this means for states, societies, and religions.

In order to develop strategies and methods to meet the challenges of our times, this summer school suggests engaging in academic contemplation and interdisciplinary exchange. Such investigations offer us the opportunity of developing disruptive intellectual approaches and ideas, as we can gain insights into the many forces that make us believe that the challenges we face are essential, natural, or inevitable. Therefore, the suggested analysis offers us not only an understanding of our own positions on an individual, a regional, national, and global level, but also the possibility of moving from a passive position to active involvement in addressing conflict, challenge, and change, and offer insights into the dynamics and structures that govern us and shape as individuals and groups. Focusing on the emphasis areas of the University of Graz – South Eastern Europe and North, Central and South America – this program will offer a basis for discussing global and continental challenges as well as opportunities that such academic engagement provides.

Questions? Email gusegg@uni-graz.at