Dr. Berit Ebert spends two weeks at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan as a Visiting Faculty Fellow

Bard College Berlin faculty member Dr. Berit Ebert spent two weeks at the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek (AUCA) as a Visiting Faculty Fellow. From April 7-18, 2025, she co-taught seminars, gave lectures and explored synergies for future research collaborations between AUCA and Bard College Berlin. During her stay, she worked closely with Dr. Begaiym Esenkulova who edited the new open-access textbook Investment Law, Justice, and Sustainable Development together with Professor Frank Emmert (Indiana University Robert H. McKinney School of Law). To this forthcoming book, Ebert contributed the chapter titled "International Investment Treaties and the Promotion of Gender Equality," which details how gender concerns must form an integral part of international investment agreements to foster sustainable and trustworthy investment decisions.

At the end of her stay, her public lecture "Safeguarding Gender Dissidence in the European Union" centered around the values of the European Union (EU), outlined in Article 2 of the Treaty on European Union (TEU) to protect Union states against democratic backsliding with a strong focus on the rule of law. In Poland, the Law and Justice (PiS) party, in power from 2015-2023, threatened the rule of law and gender equality, while advocates for gender equality fought to safeguard these principles. Using this example, Ebert analyzed the structural and socially normative factors that enable or hinder gender concerns' access to the EU, starting at the subnational level, moving to the Union level via gender policies in Poland’s 2018 local elections and their bottom-up translatability to the institutions of the EU. Lastly, the role of the European Commission and the Court of Justice of the European Union in supporting gender equality and the rule of law were taken into account to show how bottom-up and top-down approaches interact in shaping EU policymaking and in developing resilience against democratic backsliding.



Post Date: 05-12-2025