One of ECAS’ main functions is to strengthen and build research collaborations between its partners. Excellent researchers at both the University of Glasgow and Leuphana Unviersity Lüneburg give us the opportunity to develop and support topical and relevant research projects.

Currently, ECAS is focusing on building up three projects:

• 5G: Sociality, Politics and Practices
• Crisis Litigation: Understanding the Role of International Courts
• Enlightenments: German & Scottish

5G: Sociality, Politics and Practices

5G – the fifth generation of cellular network technology – is just starting to be implemented into various regions around the globe, and already sparked fear that 5G radiation could have adverse health effects. On the other hand, security experts criticise 5G its security vulnerabilities – as 5G transmits certain identifying data, with hackers who potentially use it to identify and track devices in a given area.

As a yet to be established research project, this ECAS focus project can help to better understand the social practices, politics and values in technological development.

Crisis Litigation: Understanding the Roles of International Courts

Over the last two decades, international courts and tribunals have been frequently asked to deal with major political conflicts and to pronounce on crises of global significance, including the military conflicts in the former Yugoslavia (including Kosovo), Congo/Zaire, the conflicts between Russia, Georgia and Ukraine, Palestine and Israel and US and Iran. While not an unprecedented phenomenon, the pattern seems new: international courts and tribunals today are regularly “in demand” during critical situations of global reach – a change compared to their traditional perception as institutions typically addressing disputes of lesser or mid-level significance.
However, their new significance comes at a price: respondent states not only vigorously oppose claims brought against them, but international courts and tribunals, operating on the basis of consensual jurisdiction, have typically been precluded from addressing conflicts in their entirety.

Enlightenments: German & Scottish

This research initiative consolidates the cultural and scholarly activity of two kindred regions in an effort to revive one principal, geo-specific legacy of the age of reason. It does so in view of recent political upheavals arguably caused by the disruptive effects of digital communication on the functional integrity of pre-existing public spaces. Enlightenments: German & Scottish taps into a long tradition of engaged bi-cultural reflection to consider how neglected customs of rights and duties might be institutionalized in the digital lifeworld with an aim to insure the continued viability of a communicative commons that can vouchsafe a modicum of pluralist discursivity and consequent institutional attunements. By cultivating the spirit of engaged dissent, we seek to redress an ethic of communication that is currently out of synch with the technological givens of networked transaction and exchange.