YouTube links to the conference Care, Control, and Biopolitics: Reckoning with Covid Governance
University of Graz, 28-30 April 2026
The recordings from the conference Care, Control, and Biopolitics: Reckoning with Covid Governance, held at the University of Graz in April 2026, are now available online.
Bringing together historians, legal scholars, philosophers, journalists, social scientists, and medical doctors from different intellectual and political backgrounds, the conference sought to examine the Covid-19 period as a historical and political phenomenon. Discussions addressed questions of emergency governance, democratic legitimacy, censorship, conformity, biopolitics, institutional trust, and the transformation of the conditions under which dissent and critique could be publicly articulated.
The recordings of the keynote lectures, panel discussions, interviews, and conversations are collected below.
Link to the playlist on YouTube here.
Details:
Session 1:
Muriel Blaive: Presentation of Toby Green
Toby Green: Covid-19, or The World-Historical Crisis in Humanity – Keynote and Q&A
Introduction to the conference:
Muriel Blaive: Care as Control, or the Biopolitics of Crisis Governance: Why This Conference?
Session 2 — From Communism to Covid: Authoritarian Repertoires
Chair: Ana Kladnik
Milan Hanyš: Cultural Memory, Nationalism, and Pandemic Governance in Early Covid-Era Czech Republic
Marián Lóži: Back to Scientific Governance? Public Epidemiologists in Czechia and Slovakia during Covid: Echoes of the Communist Past
Discussion
Session 3 — Science, Models, and Authority
Chair: Zorica-Iva Sirocic
Juliette Rouchier: Political Opposition “Based on Science” During the Covid-19 Pandemic (via Zoom)
Maximilien Lacour: In Defense of Public Health Scientists as Advocates: Early Covid-19 Decision-Making in the UK
Laurent Mucchielli: The Covid Doxa: Scientistic Utopia, Commercial Interests, and Antidemocratic Drift in Western Countries (via Zoom)
Michael Casey: A Shroud for Covid: The Medicalization of Politics
Discussion
Session 4 — Architecture of Control: Law, Exception, Authority
Chair: Jovana Cvetićanin
Marina Aksenova: The Biopolitics of Covid and the Rule of Law
Klaus Kraemer: Communities of Apprehension: The Intransigence of Indivisible Conflicts and their Epistemic Closure during the COVID-19 Crisis
John Vecchione: From Public Health to Information Control: The Legal Battle Over Covid-19 Speech (via Zoom)
Discussion
Session 5 — Lived Experiences of Language, Memory, and Propaganda
Chair: Simone De Angelis
Muriel Blaive: Covid as a World of Meaning: An Oral History of the Conference Participants
Nadine Buchmann: The Novel Language of Covid
Vladan Jovanović: Pandemic Propaganda, Corruption, and Political Convergence in Serbia
Discussion
Session 6 — Information as Policy: The Public Response and the Issue of Legitimacy
Chair: Toby Green
András Bozóki: The Normalization of Crisis Governance: Permanent State of Exception in Autocratic Regimes
Tad Tietze: Crisis, Authority, and Social Retreat? Political Legitimacy and the Covid-19 Response
Discussion
Closing session: Has Precautionary Authoritarianism Become Our Unsurpassable Horizon?
Chair: Albin Sybera
Closing Discussion: Has Precautionary Authoritarianism Become Our Unsurpassable Horizon?