8 -9 june 2026
10:00 - 17:00
University of Milano - Bicocca, Building Civitas - U7, 3rd Floor, Aula Pagani
Conference overview
This conference critically engages with the arguments advanced in Seyla Benhabib's At the Margins of the Modern State, which interrogates the tensions between universalism and exclusion in contemporary political and legal orders.
In a global context marked by war, democratic backsliding, and the erosion of international norms, universalism can no longer be understood as either uncontested or complete.
The challenge today is to reconstruct democratic and cosmopolitan norms under conditions of pluralism, asymmetry, and historical injustice.
The conference is organized around two central questions:
- Can democracy be normatively and institutionally reconstructed in an age of polycrisis, fractured sovereignty, and the transformation of the public sphere?
- Under what conditions is democracy still possible today?
Project framework
This conference represents the final event of the PRIN 2022 research project Democracy, Sustainability and Wellbeing in Times of Emergency: Reframing Political Concepts and Institutions (D.E.W.E.Y.), funded by the Italian Ministry of University and Research. The conference is organised in collaboration with ResetDOC.