"Eastern Europe" is a concept many political scientists, area studies scholars, and lay people have been using over the years almost by default. But what does "Eastern Europe" mean geo-poltically, culturally, and historically? It is increasingly difficult to define where "Eastern Europe" may or may not be: since the fall of the Soviet Union and the break-up of the Soviet bloc, the term is one that carries a nuance of belonging to the list of losers of globalization, rather than the winners. My contention is that the very notion of "Eastern Europe" is slowly, but surely disappearing. The question that emerges is what are the viable alternatives for talking about and defining this region as it enters into negotiations or joins the EU. What place, if any, does the "East" have in the political agenda of European governments, elites, and the general populace?

Klaus Segbers is Professor of Political Science at Freie Universitat in Berlin. He is the Program Director of the Center for Global Politics and directs a number of the Friei Universitat's innovative graduate studies programs, including East European Studies Online, International Relations Online, German Studies Russia, and Global Politics Summer School China. Segbers conducts research on a range of topics involving contemporary Europe: Germany's foreign relations with Eastern European countries, EU enlargement, the impact of globalization on world cities, elections in Russia, comparative analysis of institutional changes in Russia and China, and an analysis of area studies as practiced in academic settings. Segers is a visiting scholar at the Center for Russian, East European & Eurasian Studies at Stanford University for Winter 2008.

Before coming to CDDRL, Miriam Abu Sharkh was employed at the United Nation's specialized agency for work, the International Labour Organization, in Geneva, Switzerland. As the People's Security Coordinator (P4), she analyzed and managed large household surveys from Argentina to Sri Lanka. She also worked on the Report on the World Social Situation for the United Nation's Department of Economic and Social Affairs in New York. Previously, she had also been a consultant for the German national development agency (Gesellschaft für Technische Zusammenarbeit, GTZ) in Germany where she focused on integrating core labor standards into German technical cooperation.

She has written on the spread and effect of human rights related labour standards as well as on welfare regimes, gender discrimination, child labour, social movements and work satisfaction.

Currently, she holds a grant by the German National Science Foundation (Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft) to study the evolvement of worldwide patterns of gender discrimination in the labor market, specifically the effects of international treaties. These questions are addressed in longitudinal, cross-national studies from the 1950´s to today.

This research builds on her previous work as a Post-doctoral Fellow at CDDRL as well as her dissertation on child labor for which she received a "Summa cum Laude" ( Freie Universität Berlin, Germany-joint dissertation committee with Stanford University). After discussing various labor standard initiatives, the dissertation analyzes when and why countries ratify the International Labour Organization's Minimum Age Convention outlawing child labour via event history models. It then examines the effect of ratification on child labor rates over three decades through a panel analyses. While her dissertation employed quantitative methods, her Diplom thesis (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany) builds on extensive fieldwork in South Africa examining the genesis, strategies, and structures of the South African women's movement.

Professor Rathkolb is the co-founder of a scientific quarterly, "Medien und Zeit" (Media and Time), focusing on interdisciplinary questions of contemporary history and communications/media history, and is managing editor of "Zeitgeschichte" (Contemporary History). Since 1980, Professor Rathkolb has regularly presented papers at conferences and universities in the U.S. and Europe, including the Society for Historians of American Foreign Relations, American Political Science Association, German Studies Association, UC Berkeley, Harvard, Princeton, and Stanford University, and has been a visiting professor at the University of Chicago. He has published more than 100 articles on Austrian, European contemporary political, and cultural history, as well as international affairs and business history.

This presentation will analyze the most important changes in historical political terms that have taken place in the Austrian debate on the causes and consequences of the National Socialist takeover of power in 1938. At the same time, the results, which take into account recent research on communicative and cultural memory, will be enriched and widened in scope through a consideration of how the Anschluss is perceived by the international community of historians.