Dr Katarina Kušić from the Centre for Advanced Studies Southeast Europe opened the 64th International Academic Week of the Southeast Europe Association (Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft – SOG), held from 5 to 9 October 2026 at the Akademie für Politische Bildung in Tutzing, Germany. This year’s edition, titled “Who Owns the Land? Property Relations, Land Use, Belonging, and Social Inequality in Rural Southeast Europe”, was hosted by Dr Judith Möllers and Prof. Daniel Müller of the Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO).

In the conference’s Opening Perspectives session, Dr Kušić delivered the talk “Planetary Land Relations in Southeastern Europe: Extraction, Conservation, Abandonment”, alongside Dr Stefan Dorondel (Francisc Rainer Institute of Anthropology, Romanian Academy), who spoke on “What is Land? Ownership, Materiality and Shiftiness”. Together, the two talks framed the week’s discussions on land, property, and inequality in the region.

The International Academic Week is SOG’s annual flagship event, bringing together early-career researchers and established scholars from across Europe and beyond to discuss research on Southeast Europe. During the conference’s collaborative production day, Dr Kušić also moderated one of two collaborative writing groups, in which participants brought together insights from across the workshop to develop a text on abandonment in Southeast Europe, to be continued and published after the event.

The participation strengthened CAS SEE’s ties with the Southeast Europe Association and connected the Centre’s work with a growing interdisciplinary community studying land and political ecology in the region.

More about the 64th International Academic Week can be found here.