Crisis – A User’s Guide: Lecture by Dariusz Gafijczuk (Newcastle University)

Date and Time: 21 September 2023, Thursday, 15.30  

Venue: Corvinus University, Building C, Room C316 

Language: English 

Abstract: In its common understanding crisis indicates a breakdown of reality. As such, crisis has become a universal sign for things having gone badly wrong – a threat to everyday normality that must be resolved or avoided altogether. My argument questions this, now almost instinctive, equivalence between crisis and calamity. Instead, I will show how crisis, in its long ‘career’ as a concept, is a type of experience that enables distinctive types of knowledge about the social world. In short, by distancing crisis from the sense of emergency, will attempt to repurpose it as a type of method that can be used to understand the social world in newly critical ways. 

Dariusz Gafijczuk teaches and researches in social theory, epistemology and history at Newcastle University, UK. His work is driven by a cross-disciplinary approach focused on a ‘conceptual recovery/renewal’ of social science analytical tools that can help address the pressing problems of today. He is currently embarking on a project on the year 1989 and post-history. Dariusz has a PhD from the University of Alberta in Canada, and held posts at University College London, Trinity College Dublin and Lancaster University before joining Newcastle University in 2013.