News

2022

Workshop: The future of corruption studies, Cres, 28 September – 2 October 2022.

This meeting of the Regensburg Corruption Cluster and its partners was designed to help our doctoral students and the postdoc to finalize their projects, but also to develop follow-up ideas for the further development of the cluster.

Klaus Buchenau: Opening talk

Thomas Steger: The future of corruption studies from a business & management perspective

Free discussion session

Mihai Olaru: Varieties of corruption in 18th century Wallachia

Miloš Lecić: Corruption Serbia and Croatia in the “short” 20th century, 1914-1989

Barbara Frey: Agrokombinat and Agrokor; Survey on the perception of corruption and informality among Croatian SMEs owners and managers

Jovana Jović: Corruption in mass media: A frame-semantic analysis of the Agrokomerc scandal based on newspaper articles from Politika

Damjan Matković: The Railway Affair (1882-1891)

Aram Simonyan: Ideas on a postdoc project

Conference: Informal practices in Southeast Europe – Examples and Analyses. Institute for the Recent History of Serbia (Institut za noviju istoriju Srbije/INIS), Belgrade, 10–11 April 2022

Our team participated in this two-day conference on the informal practices in Southeast Europe. It was an exceptional opportunity to familiarize ourselves with the latest developments in an emerging field, where the topics centered on both the historical continuities of informal practices in the region and on new emerging methods for classification and comparison of informality. We presented on four different topics, providing an overview of the research currently being conducted by our Regensburg cluster:

Mihai Olaru: The Notion of ‘Common Good’ in 18th Century Wallachia and Its Role in the Definition of Corruption

Damjan Matković: Informality and Corruption in Serbia 1817–1914

Jovana Jović and Miloš Lecić: From Corruption to Informality: An Interdisciplinary Cooperation between Historians and Linguists

Barbara Frey: Corruption and Informal Practices in Business: Focus on Serbia and Croatia

The lively debate following both our and the presentations of our colleagues, made it clear that approaching the topic of corruption through the lens of informality provides a substantially more productive way forward, that is rooted in actual practices rather than the top-down anti-corruption policies and narratives.

2021

LMU München, Prof. Dr. Klaus Buchenau, 10. Februar 2021, Colloquium zur Osteuropäischen Geschichte
Vortrag: Wald, Gewalt und Geld. Das Haus Thurn und Taxis, kroatische Bauern und jugoslawische Politiker im Kampf um die Holzreserven Kroatiens, 1919–1941

ASEES virtual convention, Prof. Dr. Klaus Buchenau, 5-8 November 2021, Panel “Beyond Anti-Corruption Campaigns: The Social and Cultural History of Corruption in Late Socialism“
Presentation: A Third Way into Twilight?: Corruption and Anti-Corruption in Socialist Yugoslavia

2020

Universität Regensburg, Prof. Dr. Klaus Buchenau, 12-14 Uhr, SoSe 2020
Vorlesung: Illegitime Bereicherung. Eine Geschichte der politischen Korruption in Europa

University of Zagreb, Prof. Dr. Klaus Buchenau, 23-24 September 2020, Conference „Transitions out of Empire in Central and Southeastern Europe“
Presentation: The Nationalisation and Restitution of the Thurn and Taxis Forests in Croatia (1919-1941). A Case Study on the Interplay of National, Post-Imperial and Criminal Elite Networks

Samostan sv. Franje, Cres, 23-30 September 2020, Workshop “Informality and Corruption through the Interdisciplinary Lens”
Presentations from invited guests and discussions on the individual projects of the Regensburg Corruption Cluster (report will be available soon)

University of Rijeka, Prof. Dr. Klaus Buchenau, 21 October 2020, Regensburg – Rijeka Lectures: New Trends in Southeast European Studies
Presentation: A Grammar of Bribery – developed on the struggle over the Thurn and Taxis forests in Croatia (1919-1941) (aufgezeichnet per Zoom)