Bringing together twenty scholars and ten KFG doctoral candidates and post-doctoral fellows, this year’s annual conference focused on the relatively new academic field of comparative regionalism. In fruitful and constructive discussions, six panels were held aiming at revisiting the development and findings of the scholarly field so far and at developing a future research agenda. After an Introductory panel (Fredrik Söderbaum, Etel Solingen), two panels on Regionalisms around the World discussed the findings of the scholarly fields on different parts of the world (Francesco Duina, Andrea Bianculli, Kathleen Hancock, Alexander Libman, Anja Jetschke, Vera van Hüllen, Christof Hartmann). The following two panels took a sectoral perspective discussing the development of the field with regard to various policy fields (Soo Yeon Kim, Arie Kacowicz, Galia Press-Bar-Nathan, Laszlo Bruszt, Kathleen McNamara). The last two panels on Comparing Regional Institutions (Gary Marks, Tobias Lenz, Jeffrey Checkel, Berthold Rittberger, Andrea Ribeiro-Hoffmann) and Explaining Regionalism (Tanja A. Börzel, Edward Mansfield, Helen Milner, Thomas Risse) moved to institutionalist and theoretical perspectives that the field has developed on regionalism.

Led by the conference convenors and research directors of the KFG, Prof. Tanja A. Börzel and Prof. Thomas Risse, the conference was ended by a concluding discussion which identified current gaps in the field and pointed the way to future avenues of research.

A more detailed report will be published in our next newsletter issue.