On 15–16 October, Caucasus University hosted the international interdisciplinary conference “Authoritarianism, Narratives, and Cultures: Continuity, Disruption, and Change, Past and Present.”

Organized in collaboration with Johns Hopkins University (USA), the conference brought together scholars from universities and research institutions across several countries. It explored authoritarianism not merely as a form of political governance, but also as a historical and cultural phenomenon that shapes artistic practices, cultural memory, religious identities, education, public narratives, and everyday life.

The conference brought together researchers and distinguished academics from Georgia, the United States, Germany, the United Kingdom, Lithuania, the Czech Republic, Bulgaria, Romania, Italy, and Serbia. Participating institutions included Harvard University, Johns Hopkins University, the University of Oxford, the University of Miami, Emory University, Middlebury College, Freie Universität Berlin, the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre, the National Museum in Prague, the University of Ostrava, the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Music “Gheorghe Dima,” the University of Udine, the University of Arts in Belgrade, Caucasus University, and Ivane Javakhishvili Tbilisi State University.

The conference’s keynote speakers were Professor Stephen F. Jones (Harvard University’s Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies, USA) and Professor Jessica C. E. Gienow-Hecht (Freie Universität Berlin, Germany).

The conference fostered international academic dialogue and laid the groundwork for future collaboration, encouraging comparative and interdisciplinary research on authoritarianism, cultural memory, and the relationship between political power and cultural expression across different historical and geographical contexts.