PANELS
Below you’ll find an overview of the conference panels, each designed to explore key themes and spark insightful discussion. Go to any panel to view its description and featured speakers. We invite you to browse the sessions below and choose the conversations that best align with your interests.
Crisis & policymaking
Lydie cabane (leiden University)
Convenor
Lydie Cabane is senior Assistant Professor at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs.
Federico Toth (University of Bologna)
Convenor
Federico Toth is Full Professor of Political Science at the University of Bologna. His main research interests include comparative health policy, policy-making analysis and crisis management.
ABout
Crises and policy-making are fundamentally related. Public policies can cause crises; crisis management is essentially a policy making activity: policies are in place to deal with crises, or policies get disrupted by crises. In return, crises affect policy-making, either by precipitating changes or through their repeating occurences by transforming the normal conditions of policy-making.
This panel welcomes papers that engage with the relationship between crises and public policy from a variety of angles. This includes work that takes stock of recent developments in the literature following the Covid-19 pandemic and discussions around poly- and transboundary crises — in particular, work that moves beyond single-event analysis towards a more systematic understanding of how crises shape public policy. It also welcomes papers that revisit classic crisis theories in light of these developments, or that seek to push the field forward by addressing emerging challenges and new directions. Both experienced and emerging researchers are encouraged to submit.
If you’re interested, please reach out to Lydie Cabane and Federico Toth
Societal Resilience: Resisting Malign Foreign Interference
Convenor
To be announced
panel participants
Beatrice de Graaf is a historian and a security, crisis & terrorism researcher. She is also the Scientific Director at Adapt!
Bart Schuurman is Professor of Terrorism and Political Violence at the Institute of Security and Global Affairs, and head of the research group by the same name.
panel participants
Sarah de Lange is Professor of Dutch Politics at the Institute for Political Science.
Larissa Böckmann holds a Master’s degree in Empirical Research on Democracy and a Bachelor’s Degree in Political Science and Philosophy from the University of Mainz. During her studies, she acquired international experience in Spain and Colombia and work experience with different NGO’s.
Sense and meaning making in times of crisis: An applied history perspective
beatrice de graaf (Utrecht university)
Convenor
Beatrice de Graaf is a historian and a security, crisis & terrorism researcher. She is also the Scientific Director at Adapt!
panel participants
Ruben Ros is a postdoc at Adapt! and focuses on digital-historical research into crisis dynamics. What happens to public thought and discourse after major events? When can we speak of a crisis, and what kind of language is associated with it? Ruben Ross will talk about Mapping Crisis narratives across the modern age.
Mathijs van der Loo is a PhD student at Adapt! In his PhD research, he studies Dutch charity culture during the cholera epidemics (1830-1900).
Making Critical Decisions
Arjen boin (leiden university)
Convenor
Arjen Boin is Professor of Public Institutions and Governance at the Institute of Political Science. He is also a senior partner at Crisisplan and academic advisor at Adapt!
panel participants
To be announced
about
To be announced
The Politics of Detection (celebrating Barry Turner)
Arjen boin (leiden university)
Convenor
Arjen Boin is Professor of Public Institutions and Governance at the Institute of Political Science. He is also a senior partner at Crisisplan and academic advisor at Adapt!
panel participants
To be announced
About
To be announced
Crisis meaning-making (Framing)
Thijs van Dooremalen(Leiden University)
Convenor
Thijs van Dooremalen is Assistant Professor at Institute of Security and Global Affairs, at Leiden University. His research focuses on how and why events can cause transformations within national public spheres (media, politics, policy making).
about
Crises come into being through meaning-making processes: whether events or situations are considered crises, how they should be tackled, and what future lessons could be taken from them are all matters of ‘framing contests’. This panel is open to papers studying these processes from different academic backgrounds, using a diversity of methods, and a variety of crisis cases. Possible research questions could be: What determines who wins crisis framing contests? How is this impacted by institutions, types of crises, or country contexts? How do framing contests differ across crisis stages (e.g., preparedness, responses, mitigation)?
You can submit your paper proposals at:
t.j.a.van.dooremalen@fgga.leidenuniv.nl
panel participants
Stijn Willem van ’t Land works as a researcher and PhD candidate for the Institute of Security and Global Affairs (ISGA). He will talk about the factors and mechanisms through which foreign terrorist attacks turn into domestic crises
Ioana Sendroiu is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Hong Kong. Iona will discuss how big oil companies are seeking to settle climate crisis claims
Wouter Jong got his PhD at Tilburg University. He is a crisis management and crisis communication consultant. Wouter will discuss how crises reshape the way organizations are publicly compared and evaluated
The Ethics of Crisis Management
Rik Peels (Vrije Universiteit amsterdam)
Convenor
Rik Peels is Professor of Philosophy and Theology of Radicalization at the Faculty of Religion and Theology of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He is also the chairman of the International Scientific Advisory Board of Adapt!
About
This panel is dedicated to the study of leaders’ moral decision-making during crises. It presents empirical data, both qualitative and quantitative, on how moral decisions are made by crisis managers. It also presents more theoretical work: which ethical and meta-ethical theories, concepts, arguments, and tools apply to and are useful for crisis management? Finally, it presents normative, particularly ameliorative, work: how can we improve on ethical decision-making during crises, which guidelines can we formulate, and what can we do to ensure that they are actually fruitfully implemented?
panel participants
To be announced
Secrets of societal resilience
Jori Kalkman (Wageningen university &research)
Convenor
Jori Kalkman is an Associate Professor at Wageningen University & Research. His research focuses primarily on crisis management, disaster response and societal resilience.
about
Governments across the globe are adopting plans to build more resilient societies. Classic crisis management studies provide helpful building blocks through research on citizen responses to disaster, differences in vulnerability among various social groups, and spontaneous support from emergent volunteer groups. In this panel, we build on these classic insights to take research on societal resilience into the new era.
panel participants
To be announced
The Robust Governance of Turbulence
Convenors
Christopher K. Ansell is a political scientist, academic, and author. He is a professor of Political Science at the University of California, Berkeley.
Convenors
Jacob Torfing is professor in Politics and Institutions and Research Director of Center for Democratic Network Governance.
Eva Sørensen is professor of Public Administration and Democracy at Roskilde University. She is currently the Vice-director of Roskilde School of Governance.
About
This panel introduces the concept of turbulence as analytical lens for understanding the complex and variable dynamics associated with both crisis and non-crisis situations and examines the different causes of growing societal turbulence. By posing a challenge to public governance, turbulence creates an imperative for both stability and change. The panel develops the idea of “robustness” (as opposed to reliability or resilience) as the critical property of systems that enables them to successfully adapt to turbulence. The panel then explores organizational and political strategies for achieving robust governance.
Eu crisis management track
About
Transboundary Crises and Governance Transformations
Transboundary crises rarely stop at managing the immediate emergency. They can generate deep, lasting and even polity-changing effects at both the European and national levels. This panel focuses on such effects, both immediate and long-term, examining how crises reshape not only political-administrative arrangements but also institutional, cultural, economic, and social dynamics. How do cross-border shocks leave lasting imprints on governance systems and societies? We welcome conceptual and empirical contributions that explore these longer-term transformations. Junior scholars working on transboundary crises, of any type and effect, are especially encouraged to apply.
Convenors: Amy Verdun, Magnus Ekengren and Mark Rhinard
For paper proposals, contact Mark Rhinard
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From Signal to Action: Governing Early Warning in Transboundary Crisis Environments
Many classical challenges of crisis management now unfold across political, sectoral, and geographical boundaries. One such challenge is early detection of emerging crises (the identification and interpretation of weak signals before escalation) paired with timely intervention. From pandemics and terrorism to disinformation and climate risks, acting across boundaries has become increasingly complex. In cooperative governance systems such as the EU and NATO, early warning relies on pooled information, shared sense-making, and coordinated pathways that help move from signal to action. This panel will bring together scholars and practitioners to explore what classical theorizing has to say about how transboundary detection and intervention can be organized for reliability and legitimacy.
Convenors: Magnus Ekengren & Mark Rhinard
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Governing COVID-19 as a Transboundary Crisis: Lessons from the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF)
This panel examines the responses by the EU to the COVID-19 crisis, in particular the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF) – a temporary instrument of the NextGeneration/EU pandemic recovery plan, which comes to an end in 2026. Member States were offered loans and grants but were required to undertake significant reforms and investments. How well has this mechanism delivered? With hindsight, and by drawing on core works in the literature, we examine the current state of affairs. How well has this mode of governance performed? What lessons can be drawn from this episode, and what approaches should guide future crisis responses?
Convenor: Amy Verdun
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Convenors
Amy Verdun is Professor of Political Science at University of Victoria. Dr. Verdun holds a PhD in Political and Social Sciences from the European University Institute (EUI) Florence, Italy (1995).
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Mark Rhinard is Senior Research Fellow at the Europe Research Program at UI. His research focuses on European cooperation questions, especially in the areas of external and internal security.
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Magnus Ekengren is Professor of Political Science at the Swedish Defence University in Stockholm.
Magnus is a former Swedish diplomat and was previously Deputy Director at the Policy Planning Unit of the Swedish Ministry for Foreign Affairs, where he dealt with EU enlargement and institutional reform, the Common Foreign and Security Policy and the Common Security and Defence Policy.
AI and Digital Transformation in Crisis Governance
Babak Rezaeedaryakenari
Convenor
Dr. Babak RezaeeDaryakenari is an associate professor in the Institute of Political Science at Leiden University, specialising in geopolitics and political power.
About
Artificial intelligence and digital decision-support systems are reshaping how governments anticipate, interpret, and respond to crises. This panel explores how data-driven technologies influence leadership under uncertainty, institutional coordination, and public accountability in emergency contexts. Rather than focusing solely on technical capabilities, the discussion centers on how AI transforms crisis governance itself by reconfiguring authority, responsibility, and legitimacy in moments of high political and societal stakes.
Speaker
To be announced
Resilience and neighbouring concepts: a multidisciplinary perspective
About
As the concept of resilience has gained prominence across crisis management studies, organizational research, and public policy, it has often been mobilized as a catch-all explanation for how organizations and societies cope with, adapt to, and recover from disruption. While this diffusion has enhanced its visibility, it has also contributed to conceptual ambiguity and analytical overlap with a range of closely related ideas.
This track hosts contributions that revisit organizational and societal resilience through the lens of classic works and foundational debates in crisis management and neighbouring fields. In line with the overall aim of the conference to re-anchor the field in its intellectual roots, the track encourages authors to reflect on how resilience connects to, diverges from, or builds upon established concepts such as crisis detection, decision-making under pressure, high reliability, turbulence. Contributions are further invited to examine resilience from different analytical perspectives, including networks, institutionalism, agency, power and politics, and to discuss its relevance for broader concerns such as innovation, and ethics.
The track is structured around three interrelated sessions, each corresponding to a distinct level of analysis through which resilience and its neighbouring concepts can be revisited and re-anchored in classic crisis management debates.
Panel participants session 1
Christopher Ansell is Professor of Political Science. He is also a Fellow of the National Academy of Public Administration and the Faculty Director of Berkeley’s Center for Catastrophic Risk Managemen
Arjen Boin is Professor of Public Institutions and Governance at the Institute of Political Science. He is also a senior partner at Crisisplan and academic advisor at Adapt!
Tanja Klenk is a Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy at the Helmut-Schmid-University Hamburg. Her principal research interests lie in the field of the governance and administration of the welfare state and comparative social policy.
Rómulo Pinheiro is Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Deputy Head of Department and member of the research group on Public Governance and Leadership (GOLEP). He is a co-track coordinator at the Digital Transformation (CeDiT) based at UiA.
Maria Laura Frigotto is Full professor of Organization Studies, University of Trento.
Panel participants session 2
Elke Loeffler is Director of the non-profit organisation Governance International and Director of Research and Strategic Partnerships at the Open University.
Luca Giustiniano is Full Professor of Organization Studies. He is also Prorector for Organization and Faculty at Luiss Guido Carli University and has been Associate Dean for Quality Management and Accreditation at Luiss Business School.
Tanja Klenk is a Professor of Public Administration and Public Policy at the Helmut-Schmid-University Hamburg. Her principal research interests lie in the field of the governance and administration of the welfare state and comparative social policy.
Rómulo Pinheiro is Professor of Public Policy and Administration, Deputy Head of Department and member of the research group on Public Governance and Leadership (GOLEP). He is a co-track coordinator at the Digital Transformation (CeDiT) based at UiA.
Maria Laura Frigotto is Full professor of Organization Studies, University of Trento.
new approaches for studying crisis decision making
Ellen giebels
Convenor
Ellen Giebels is professor of Conflict and Security at the University of Twente. She is director of data quality, methods and ethics at Adapt!
About
To be announced
Speaker
To be announced
The political consequences of crisis management
Lydie Cabane
Convenor
Lydie Cabane is senior Assistant Professor at the Institute for Security and Global Affairs. Her main interests include crises, governance, public policy, states, expertise, European Union and global politics.
Vasiliki (Billy) Tsagkroni
Convenor
Vasiliki (Billy) Tsagkroni is Senior Assistant Professor of Comparative Politics at the Institute of Political Science.
about
Crises are moments of rupture, but also of political transformation. While classical crisis research has examined the politics of crisis management, recent research now call for systematising the reverse question: how does crisis management reshape politics itself?
This panel examines how crisis management reshapes political authority, legitimacy, accountability, and state-society relations across policy domains, levels of governance, and over the long term. It is particularly interested in three clusters of questions. First, how do emergency powers, executive discretion, and the rise of expert authority reconfigure democratic accountability and state-society relations? Second, what kind of politics emerge from crisis and the ‘crisisification’ of policy-making? For example, how do crisis communication strategies affect political trust, polarisation, and public compliance? Third, it is time to revisit classical questions about crisis and power in light of contemporary experience: when do crisis interventions consolidate incumbent power, and when do they open windows for reform, institutional learning, or contestation? Under what conditions do temporary measures become permanent features of governance, and with what consequences for democratic legitimacy?
By bringing diverse methodological and theoretical perspectives into dialogue, the panel aims to build bridges across crisis research and political science, and to outline a comparative agenda for studying how governing under pressure transforms the political landscape over time.
This initiative is organized under the support of the ECPR Network on the Politics of Crisis Management.
Interested in presenting a paper in this panel? Please contact Vasiliki (Billy) Tsagkroni (v.tsagkroni@fsw.leidenuniv.nl) and/or Lydie Cabane (l.d.cabane@fgga.leidenuniv.nl)
Beyond Expert Silos: Integrated Science for Policy in Times of Crisis
Convenors
To be announced
About
Contemporary crises require policymakers to make decisions under conditions of uncertainty, urgency, and complex societal trade-offs. Effective crisis governance increasingly depends on integrating diverse forms of knowledge, including biomedical, technical, social, economic, and behavioral expertise. Yet scientific advice during crises is often organized along disciplinary or sectoral lines, making it difficult to translate heterogeneous forms of knowledge into coherent and actionable policy guidance.
This closed panel explores the concept of Integrated Science for Policy, an emerging approach that seeks to strengthen crisis governance by fostering interdisciplinary collaboration in the science–policy interface. Rather than treating expertise as separate inputs, integrated approaches aim to produce coordinated assessments that account for both technical evidence and broader societal implications of policy decisions. The panel highlights broader challenges that apply across crisis domains, including the coordination of heterogeneous expertise, the communication of uncertainty, and the translation of scientific insights into policy-relevant advice.
This panel brings together contributions from the UNITY consortium, focusing on integrated science for policy in pandemics, and the FUTURISK collaboration, which applies a multi-hazard perspective to integrated approaches for crisis governance and decision-making.
Success and Failure of Crisis Responses
Coordinator and speakers to be announced.
Societal Implications of Failed Crisis Management
Coordinator and speakers to be announced.
The Politics of Crisis Management
Coordinator and speakers to be announced.
STAY TUNED
Updates will be announced soon—check back regularly for the latest updates and speaker details.