The Ontological Security Workshop took place
at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem in
April 2022. It was organized by Dr. Yehonatan
Abramson, Prof. Galia Press-Barnathan, and
Dr. Amir Lupovici. Funding was by The Leonard
Davis Institute for International Relations and
the Conferences Committee of the Hebrew
University of Jerusalem.
The workshop aim was to assemble senior
and junior scholars and graduate students for
a discussion of the trends and blind spots in
ontological security scholarship. The discussion
raised questions on the role of uncertainty
and routine in foreign policymaking; the
dynamics of ontological security in protracted
conflicts and transitions to peace; maintaining
ontological security during transitions to peace;
how actors respond to ontological insecurities,
transnationalism as disrupting or reinforcing
the ontological security of states, the role of
popular culture in providing and challenging
ontological security.
The workshop was also attended by faculty
members and graduate students of the
Department of International Relations at The
Hebrew University who participated in the
audience.
There were nine sessions for paper
presentations. Participants circulated papers
ahead of time and each session was devoted
to one paper (40 minutes per paper). The final
day consisted of two sessions on the Ph.D. projects of graduate students (see schedule at
the end of the report). Prof. Jelena Subotic also
delivered a key note on her recently published
award-winning book, titled, “Yellow Star, Red
Star”, on the international politics of Holocaust
Remembrance in Eastern Europe.
There were also two outside events: a guided
tour of the Israel Museum and a tour of the Mt.
Scopus campus. The tours were linked to the
workshop theme and stressed national identity,
collective memory, and international politics.
One idea to emerge from the workshop was the
submission of a joint proposal for the special
issue of a leading journal on Ethical Anxiety, a
common theme in the discussion. Participants
also discussed meetings in other institutions
to spread the discussion to other colleges.
Participants also examined the advantages
and pitfalls of measuring ontological security
and scaling-up or scaling-down the concepts.
Feedback on the workshop was generally very
positive and it was agreed to submit papers to
journals in the coming months.