Author: Szymon Górkiewicz

New situations always bring both opportunities and challenges. The best example is given by history itself. Poland, from being one of the satellite countries, managed to fully gain its independence, while the Soviet Union was collapsing. The same thing can be said about Czechoslovakia becoming a state on the ruins of Austro-Hungarian Monarchy in 1918. On the other hand, Hungarian Revolution of 1956 only strengthened oppression and a foreign influence in the country. How then, should the Visegrad Region approach the contemporary problems and “Find its Own Way” in the modern world? This is what the conference, that took place on 6th December 2024 in Kraków, tried to address.

The conference consisted of 4 panels whose topics touched on some of the most important issues of the contemporary world that the Visegrad region needs to face. The presentations and discussions on topics such as security policy, populism, migration, and US-China competition gave us a unique insight into the problems and interesting debate over how we should approach it. During the conference, however, we not only had a chance to listen to the professionals, from the universities such us Jagiellonian University in Kraków, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, University of West Bohemia in Pilsen, and University of Pécs who have been exploring those areas for years, but we also listened to the voice of students deeply interested in the topic. What is their opinion of the event then?

Attending the conference, even though it might be very stressful, is a great opportunity to get academic experience and learn many new things. Among the participants, who agree with that there are Fatima Karimli and Yaroslav Fedosov, our colleagues from the International Relations: Europe from Visegrad Perspective program. As Yaroslav said “always visiting a conference is about getting some new knowledge, sharing experience and information. It’s also about the networking and a nice opportunity to meet with students, professors and other colleagues.” Especially the last point might seem to be crucial for future academic careers. As Fatima aptly noted “sharing the same panel with experienced academic staff helped me establish meaningful contributions with them, get their feedback regarding my performance, and identify areas for improvement for future endeavors.” Based on those opinions, we can firmly state that it’s the

experience and the feedback that one gets is what is truly important and necessary for future development.

Knowing that participation in a conference is a very meaningful experience, what can we say about this one? What were the things that particularly caught the attention of us, students? According to Fatima “the idea of the panel’s organization was well-thought-out. Participants could gain perspectives from all four Visegrad countries, with an additional viewpoint provided by the performing students from outside these countries.” As we can see, the perspective, or rather a multitude of perspectives is something that the conference really paid attention to. A similar comment was made by Yaroslav who noticed “the diversity of the guests and the active participation of the students at the conference. I think this shows that there is interest in this topic and therefore there is potential for future meetings.” As the program celebrated its 10th years anniversary in 2023, we hope that we will be able to attend and be part of the next editions.

And what would be something that the students would like to see in the next editions? Some organizational changes? More panels? Some specific topics? For Yaroslav, it’s important to always adapt the topic to the needs of our dynamic world. At the same time, he mentions that “the topics of migration and security are topics that will be interesting for me at any time. I think it’s a big potential on discussion such topics nowadays.” A similar thing was expressed by Fatima who mentioned that she “would like to see more topics aligned with international peace and security and the Visegrad countries’ responses.” It clearly shows that the issue of security remains one of the most vital concerns that needs to be really focused on.

Finally, the place where the conference took place also needs to be mentioned. Kraków and the Jagiellonian University provide us with unique space where we can discuss, debate and argue over all the relevant topics. This, together with the conference itself was best sum up by Yaroslav: “Kraków was and still is a very close and favorite city for me. I am always happy to come here and the warmth and atmosphere with which I am always welcomed at the university is really unique. The emotions both from Krakow and from the conference are very positive. It is very pleasant to hear and see that there is interest in the topic of Visegrad cooperation, especially among students, there is feedback and a lot of reflections during the conference. The level of organization is very high. There is only hope that the next conference will be held, and I will be able to participate in it and also hope that this program will develop and bring its results both in

the life of students and in the life of the whole Visegrad space.” That perfectly describes the whole event and the atmosphere surrounding it.

As we can see, the conference was very well received by the students. It raised many important issues corresponding to the countries from Visegrad Region. The students’ active contribution was an important part of the event, which only added value to it. We hope that the next editions will bring us as many interesting points as this one, and even more students will have a chance to share their thoughts with the rest of the academic society.

Authors: Fidan Azizli, BinYan Hu (Aurora), Ruizhe Li (Jordan)