Observatori researchers took part in the 19th EISA Pan-European Conference on International Relations (PEC), held at ISCTE-University Institute of Lisbon from 1 to 4 September 2026. The PEC is the leading annual International Relations conference in Europe. This edition’s theme, “Even better than the real thing?”, invited reflection on how knowledge in IR is produced, circulated and contested.
Adrià Rivera Escartin presented the work in progress “An interconnected sea: EU’s re-imagining of energy maps and infrastructure in the Mediterranean”.
Giovanni Dinni presented “Out of Sync and Out of Time: Renarrating the EU Against its Shifting Historical Other” in the section Narrating World Politics. Drawing on Bachleitner’s concept of the “significant historical other”, the paper argues that the EU is narrating its political identity anew by casting its own past as something to be discarded. The EU’s narrative foil is increasingly the EU project as it was known until recently: slow, deliberative, free-market-based integration for peace under the US/NATO security umbrella. Through discourse analysis of EU speeches, policies and strategy documents, the paper traces how narratives of decline, falling behind and vulnerability are mobilised to justify anticipation, crisisification and dirigisme in security, defence and digital policy.