Humanities and Social Sciences

History Program

Staff Profiles

Dr Stefan Auer

Senior Lecturer in History and Politics & Deputy Director, Innovative Universities European Union (IUEU) Centre Room: David Myers Building E102 Tel: (61 3) 9479 3239 Fax: (61 3) 9479 5182 Email: s.auer@latrobe.edu.au Qualifications: PhD (Melbourne)

Stefan Auer is a Senior Lecturer in history and politics at La Trobe University and the Deputy Director of the Innovative Universities European Union (IUEU) Centre. Prior to this, he was Lecturer (2001-6) and Academic Director (2004-5) of the Dublin European Institute, University College Dublin. His book, Liberal Nationalism in Central Europe (Routledge, 2004, pbk 2006) won the prize for Best Book in European Studies (2005) with the University Association for contemporary European Studies (UACES). He has published articles in Critical Horizons, East European Politics and Societies, Europe-Asia Studies, Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, Osteuropa and elsewhere.

Teaching

European Union subjects delivered across Australia

Interview with His Excellency Bruno Julian, EU Ambassador to Australia. (MP4 22.1MB) (MP3 16.4MB) Transcript (rtf 19kb) (pdf 19kb)

Research Projects

• The self-limiting revolutions of 1989 in Central Europe and their more recent reincarnations (e.g. Ukraine 2004);
• Political thought of dissident intellectuals such as Vaclav Havel and Jan Patocka
• The political thought of Hannah Arendt;
• Nationalism in Central Europe;
• Enlargement of the European Union.
  

Current Graduate Supervision Areas and Topics

Kyra Giorgi - Cultural Identity & the Conceptual Terminology of Nostalgia The thesis is a comparative study between three concepts of nostalgia in three different cultural and political contexts: saudade in Portuguese, lítost in Czech, as discussed by Milan Kundera and hüzün in Turkish, as discussed by Pamuk.

Research Grants

Australian Research Council ‘Discovery Grant' for 2009-20012 (together with Dr Robert Horvath) ‘The Spectre of Velvet Revolution: Dissidents, International Civil Society and post-Communist Authoritarianism'. The project is about the phenomenon of the ‘Velvet Revolution,' a civil-society oriented approach to democratic transition that was originally conceived by East Central European dissidents and implemented during the revolutions of 1989. During the past decade, ‘Velvet revolution' has become an inspiration for pro-democracy activists and a pretext for repression in the successor states of the former USSR. By illuminating the transmission, development, uses and abuses of this concept, the project will shed new light on the possibilities for non-violent democratisation in the post-Cold War era.

2008. Institute of European Democrats in Brussels for ‘THE EUROPEAN PARLIAMENT AFTER THE 2004 ACCESSIONS: a case study that seeks to determine the impact that the European parliament had on domestic developments in two new member states, the Slovak Republic and Hungary, particularly in relation to the treatment of ethnic minorities.