The fourteenth conference of the Association, sponsored by the Griffith Business School and the National Centre for Research on Europe at the University of Canterbury, was held at Griffiths’ Gold Coast campus on 31 January – 1 February 2019. The theme of the conference was thirty years of post-communism, and featured more than fifty papers from a wide range of local and overseas speakers. The conference had two stimulating keynote presentations: “Post-communism and the borders of Europe” by Professor Stephen E. Hanson of William and Mary College, USA, and ”Russia’s Pacific policy in the 21st century” by Professor Viktor Larin of the Far Eastern Branch of the Russian Academy of Science.
There were two plenary panel sessions, one on the “Road to Peace and Cooperation in the Korean Peninsula” and featuring the Russian Ambassador to Australia, Mr Grigory S. Loginov, and the other on “How Communism and Post-Communism are Tracking” with a panel of Australian-based scholars. The more than fifty papers were organised into 15 parallel sessions, and ranged widely across central Europe, Russia and the former Soviet Union, Central Asia, China and Vietnam. In terms of disciplinary area, they included papers in political science, international relations, history, media, cultural studies, and economics. The Best Student Paper Award was given to two students, Sofya Glazunova (QUT) and Berikbol Dukeyev (ANU) for the papers they presented at the conference. The general consensus was that this was a most enjoyable and stimulating conference, one of the best the Association has held. The General Meeting of the Association was held at the same time, electing office-bearers and dealing with the other business of the Association.
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