9. 9. 2026
Between 2 and 5 September 2026, the University of Warsaw welcomed 13 doctoral students to the META United Nations Summer School, held under the title The Resilience of Multilateralism in Times of Uncertainty.
The school was organised by the steering group of the META United Nations project — a Global Outreach Project of the 4EU+ Alliance — led by Professors Morten Rasmussen (University of Copenhagen), Giovanna Adinolfi (University of Milan), Anton Stefan Zimmermann (Heidelberg University) and Dorota Heidrich (University of Warsaw).
The programme offered PhD students an interdisciplinary crash course combining history, law and social science. Following a keynote by Professor B.S. Chimni on the current crisis of multilateralism from a Global South perspective, the four days moved from the historical development of multilateralism — the League of Nations and the United Nations — to contemporary challenges: the disengagement of states from international institutions, the Gaza crisis before UN organs and the ICJ, a critical assessment of the US-proposed “Board of Peace,” and the growing role of NGOs and transnational corporations in shaping international order.
Lectures were delivered by the organizing team, as well as Professor Olga Hidalgo-Weber from the University of Geneva and Professor Alanna O’Malley from Erasmus University in Rotterdam. The closing conversation on budgetary issues of the UN System was attended and led by Mr. Jakub Chmielewski, a member of the Advisory Committee on Administrative and Budgetary Questions of the United Nations.
A distinctive feature of the school was the space given to the participants’ own work. Across three dedicated sessions, each doctoral student presented their research and engaged directly with the organising scholars. These exchanges gave participants concrete feedback on their projects and situated their individual research within a broader interdisciplinary conversation.
The greatest value of the school was the creative, hand-in-hand research environment it created: doctoral students were not only taught by leading scholars from across the Alliance and the Global South, but worked with them directly to make sense of a live crisis in multilateralism — and to think about solutions. The combination of historical, legal and social-science perspectives, together with sustained feedback on each participant’s own research, is something few PhD students encounter in a single week.
The summer school was organised by the 4EU+ Flagship 2, in the framework of the 4EU+ ETERNITY project, funded by NAWA - Polish National Agency for Academic Exchange.