Mastodawn

Always had a thing for #futures foresight & #scenarios so naturally ended up at Other Worlds at the #BarbicanCentre . Thought-provoking stuff: an 8-billion-person mega-city, planetary rewilding, & vast carbon-removal infrastructure. Fascinating, but couldn’t decide if a utopia or eco-authoritarian dystopia.

Seán Hanley Sep 19, 2025

🇨🇿 Czech parliamentary elections are happening 3–4 Oct 2025, with Andrej Babiš’s ANO likely to return.

We’re hosting a roundtable with experts on Czech politics, society & public opinion to unpack the results and what they mean for democracy and Europe.

🗓 9 Oct | 🕕 6pm | Online & in-person @ SSEES, UCL

Join the conversation! #CzechElections #CentralEurope #SSEES #BCSA

https://www.ucl.ac.uk/arts-humanities/events/2025/oct/democracy-crossroads-czech-parliamentary-elections-and-their-implications

Democracy at a crossroads? The Czech parliamentary elections and their implications

A roundtable discussion organised by the SSEESing NOW seminar series, co-sponsored by the British Czech and Slovak Association (BCSA)

Faculty of Arts and Humanities

Seán Hanley Aug 11, 2025

My new Substack on revisiting the pessimistic early “breakdown prophecies“ made about Eastern Europe im early 1990s.

Wrong then, but look more prescient today

https://open.substack.com/pub/drseanhanley/p/the-uses-of-pessimism-what-early?r=1m1g4u&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

What the early pessimists on Eastern Europe got right

After 1989, a few scholars warned Eastern Europe’s new democracies would rapidly fail. They were wrong — but 30 years on, their “breakdown prophecies” look prescient.

Central preoccupations

Seán Hanley Jul 22, 2025

Spied this intriguing product promoting UCL’s bicentennial.

The “properties” seem to be events in the institution’s 200 year history

Seán Hanley Jun 12, 2025

The wooden airship (“Gulliver”) at Prague’s Dox gallery really is the coolest thing. Pure Jules Verne.

#prague #dirigible #airships #modernart

Seán Hanley May 31, 2025

I donated £10 for this cake at the Ukrainian community stall at our local Village Day and I bloody well intend to enjoy it.

Seán Hanley Apr 13, 2025

Wow. Unbelievable an actual working red phone box that hasn’t been converted into a charity book exchange; felt like going back in time. Made a call (60p) just for the hell of it.

#curiosities #BritishLife #phoneboxes

Seán Hanley Apr 10, 2025

Sissinghurst Castle. One time home of Virginia Woolf’s lover Vita Sackville-West and diplomat husband Harold Nicolson. Lovely gardens. Good collection of books on Eastern Europe in the library including work of Beneš. Nicolson’s I would guess. #sissinghurstcastlegarden #sissinghurst #VirginaWoolf #EasternEurope #books

Seán Hanley Apr 2, 2025

Did political science get central and eastern Europe wrong?

TLDR: It did, leaning too heavily towards the power of formal institutions and the incentives of rational actors, generating an optimism bias.

Much to ponder on here

#politicalscience #EasternEurope #socialscience

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2025/04/01/did-political-science-get-central-and-eastern-europe-wrong/

Did political science get Central and Eastern Europe wrong?

Prior to the 2004 EU enlargement, there was widespread optimism about democracy in Central and Eastern Europe. But did political scientists get it wrong?

EUROPP - European Politics and Policy

Seán Hanley Apr 1, 2025

My latest on Substack

https://open.substack.com/pub/drseanhanley/p/why-todays-protests-in-eastern-europe?r=1m1g4u&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=web&showWelcomeOnShare=true

#democracy #EasternEurope #protest #history #analogy

Eastern Europe: today's protests defy historical analogies

Pushback against backsliding has little in common with past revolutions