By Otto Spijkers

Next week, the 2nd Global International Studies Conference will start in Ljubljana, Slovenia. The conference is organized by the World International Studies Committee (WISC), and the theme of the conference is What Keeps us Apart, What Keeps us Together (International Order, Justice, Values). It is enormous. There will be three Plenary Roundtables: one on international order, another on global justice, and a third on global values. Next to those roundtables, there will be, if I calculated correctly, around 200 panels, with around four paper presenters each. So that’s around 800 papers being presented in total, if my calculations are correct. And I understood that 71 countries are represented among those 800 presentations. The programme director wrote that he needed 5127 emails to receive and answer questions by all these presenters (I assume they are about deadlines and that sort of thing.) 350 papers are already available online, so I am sure there is something worth reading for everybody. I don’t know what happened to the remaining papers. Perhaps they are being written this weekend?? One of the 350 written and uploaded papers is called What’s Running the World, and it is about global values, world law, the United Nations, and global governance (like the PhD I am currently working on). The conference will be held in the Faculty of Social Science of the University of Ljubljana, with a reception in Ljubljana Castle. It looks like it will be an amazing conference in an amazing city!