Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Rebecca Slayton
Director, Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Additional Information
Program
Role
- Faculty
- PACS Core Faculty
- PACS Director
- PACS Steering Committee
- PACS Minor Field Instructor
- Einaudi Faculty Leadership
Contact
Email: rs849@cornell.edu
Phone: 607-255-8914
Bukovina: East European Microcosm
Cristina Florea in World in Focus
A new book from Cristina Florea (IES/PACS) recounts the complex history of Bukovina, a vanished borderland and buffer between Christendom and Islam. The region is now divided between Romania and Ukraine.
“[Bukovina] was a place where one might be born under one regime, grow up under another, come of age under a third, and die as a citizen of a completely different state. Within a single lifetime, people experienced multiple forms of government and were subjected to successive cultural and political projects.”
In Bukovina: The Life and Death of an East European Borderland (Princeton UP: December 2025), Cristina Florea tells the story of a place that no longer appears on maps, but continues to be shaped by competing national ambitions and the afterimages of successive empires.
Drawing on sources in Russian, Ukrainian, German, Romanian, French, and Yiddish, the book integrates stories of rural Ukrainians, Romanians, Germans, and urban German-speaking Jews and Poles who lived side by side in Bukovina—all navigating constant change and reinvention.
Today, Bukovina is once again at the center of geopolitical realignment, Florea said: “It is home to refugees fleeing eastern Ukraine and shaped by the afterlife of yet another empire: the Soviet Union. The story I tell in this book, as it has become painfully clear, has not ended.”
After the book's publication on December 16, Florea spoke with the College of Arts and Sciences about how the small borderland of Bukovina found itself at the forefront of modern state-building and governance projects that eventually extended through the rest of Europe.
“Enlightenment-era imperial projects, liberalism and its limits, competing nationalisms, two world wars, occupations and liberations, postwar reconstruction, and the dilemmas of governing diversity,” she said, “all unfold here almost as if we were watching Europe’s history on fast-forward.”
Cristina Florea is the Institute for European Studies Director's Faculty Fellow. She is an assistant professor of history (A&S) and frequent media voice on current events in Central and Eastern Europe.
Featured in World in Focus Briefs
Additional Information
Topic
- World in Focus
Program
Greenland: The Last Colony in Europe
March 19, 2026
12:00 pm
Greenland: The Last Colony in Europe: The history, status and future of Greenland as seen from its closest European neighbour
President Guðni Th. Jóhannesson, former President of Iceland (2016–2024) and current Professor of History at the University of Iceland, explores Greenland’s complex path from colony to emerging nation. Drawing on Iceland’s own experience of gaining independence from Denmark, he examines the historical ties, political tensions, and geopolitical stakes that shape Greenland’s future amid growing great-power interest in the Arctic. The lecture offers a unique perspective from Iceland, Europe’s closest neighbour to Greenland, on questions of sovereignty, self-determination, and small-state resilience in an era of global change.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
Institute for European Studies
Bukovina’s Three Stooges of Empire: Nationalism in Central Europe before and after 1918
By Our Faculty
This article examines the lives of three politicians from Austria’s crownland of Bukovina—Aurel Onciul, Nikolai Wassilko, and Benno Straucher—who pursued distinct national ambitions and built successful political careers as advocates of democratization and nationalization under imperial rule. It aims to highlight the multiple transitions these individuals experienced, including shifts from conservative to democratic mass politics, struggles for national rights, and the passage from imperial to national orders.
Article
Additional Information
Program
Type
- Article
Publication Details
Publication Year: 2025
Journal: Central European History
Information Session: Laidlaw Scholars Leadership & Research Program
January 6, 2026
11:00 am
The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.
At this session, we'll share more information about the program, including independent international projects with the Einaudi Center’s trusted partners around the world for the summer 2026 leadership-in-action portion of the program, and tips for writing a successful application. Applications are due January 12, 2026.
Register here. Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Information Session: Laidlaw Scholars Leadership & Research Program
December 16, 2025
2:00 pm
The Laidlaw Scholars Leadership and Research Program promotes ethical leadership and international research around the world—starting with the passionate leaders and learners found on campuses like Cornell. Open to first- and second-year students, the two-year Laidlaw program provides generous support to carry out internationally focused research, develop leadership skills, engage with community projects overseas, and become part of a global network of like-minded scholars from twenty universities worldwide.
At this session, we'll share more information about the program, including independent international projects with the Einaudi Center’s trusted partners around the world for the summer 2026 leadership-in-action portion of the program, and tips for writing a successful application. Applications are due January 12, 2026.
Register here. Can’t attend? Contact programs@einaudi.cornell.edu.
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
East Asia Program
Southeast Asia Program
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Institute for African Development
Institute for European Studies
South Asia Program
Southwest Asia and North Africa Program
Claire Clifford-Langenek
Student Administrative Assistant
Claire Clifford-Langenek is a junior Archaeology major and European Studies minor and works as a student administrative assistant for the Institute of European Studies. She also holds a Cornell Tradition Fellowship.
Additional Information
How Has War Shaped American Democracy?
By Our Faculty
Other
Additional Information
Program
Type
- Other
Publication Details
Publication Year: 2025
Journal: Dædalus
Durand Line: Resolved for Pakistan, Ambiguous for Afghanistan
January 29, 2026
12:00 pm
Uris Hall, G08
In this chapter, I am examining the Pashtun nationalist claims in the context of the Afghanistan government’s historical resistance to officially recognizing the Durand Line. What has been the reaction of Afghanistan’s successive governments to the Durand Line? Can this resistance be characterized as a national reaction irrespective of the people’s ethnicity, language and religion?
Or would it be more accurate to describe it as a political project by the ethnocentric Pashtun ruling elites to unify Pashtuns and to maintain their monopoly on power?
This topic is important because the official position of the Afghan government on Durand Line has had both external and internal consequences, fostering geopolitical conflict with its eastern neighbor, Pakistan, as well as alienating its non-Pashtun citizens. If the problem persists, the current instability in Afghanistan will continue with its people paying the price.
Speaker
Sharif Hozoori has a PhD in International Relations from the Center for International Politics, Organization, and Disarmament at the School of International Studies, Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU), New Delhi.
Currently, Sharif is a Visiting Lecturer in the Department of Government. His research focuses on Afghanistan politics and foreign policy, comparative politics, Central Asian and Middle Eastern affairs.
Sharif has authored several journal articles and book chapters in both national and international publications. His recent book, The Political Elites and Foreign Policy at Mullah Omar’s Emirate and Karzai’s Republic (in Persian), was published in 2024 but subsequently banned by the Taliban authorities. His most recent article, “Taliban 1.0 and 2.0 in Afghanistan: Same Policies, Persistent Vision,” appeared in the Journal of Strategic Studies in June 2025.
Sharif is presently working on two additional book chapters and one journal article. The current talk is based on his under-review book chapter contribution to Oxford University Press’s Oxford Handbook of South Asian Borders.
Host
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, part of the Einaudi Center for International Studies
Additional Information
Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Reppy Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies
South Asia Program
Cloudflare Outage Hits Hard Across the Web, but Recovery Is in Progress
Sarah Kreps, PACS
Sarah Kreps, director of the Tech Policy Institute at Cornell University, commented on the implications of internet infrastructure fragility for AI investment.