We are pleased to inform all registered and prospective participants that two distinguished International Relations scholars, Charles Kupchan of Georgetown University and Ayşe Zarakol of the University of Cambridge, have confirmed their participation as keynote speakers at the forthcoming 20th Serbian Political Science Association (SPSA) International Annual Conference.

The central topic of this year’s SPSA International Annual Conference, which will take place on 23–24 October 2026 at the University of Belgrade – Faculty of Political Science, is “Reordering of the World”. Both Kupchan and Zarakol have made significant contributions to the study of world order throughout their academic careers.

Professor Charles Kupchan is Professor of International Affairs in the School of Foreign Service and the Department of Government at Georgetown University, as well as Senior Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, where he currently directs the project “Between Two Orders”. From 2014 to 2017, Kupchan served as Special Assistant to the President and Senior Director for European Affairs on the National Security Council (NSC) in the Obama administration. He also served as Director for European Affairs on the NSC and worked in the State Department’s Policy Planning Staff. Earlier in his career, he was an Assistant Professor of Politics at Princeton University. He is the author of numerous books, including No One’s World: The West, the Rising Rest, and the Coming Global Turn (2012), How Enemies Become Friends: The Sources of Stable Peace (2010), The End of the America Era: U.S. Foreign Policy and the Geopolitics of the Twenty-first Century (2002), Power in Transition: The Peaceful Change of International Order (2001), Civic Engagement in the Atlantic Community (1999), Atlantic Security: Contending Visions (1998), Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe (1995), The Vulnerability of Empire (1994), and The Persian Gulf and the West (1987), as well as numerous articles in the fields of international relations and strategic studies.

Professor Ayşe Zarakol is Professor of International Relations at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of Emmanuel College. Her research lies at the intersection of historical sociology and international relations, focusing on East–West relations, the history and future of world order(s), conceptions of modernity and sovereignty, the rise and fall of great powers, and Turkish politics in comparative perspective. Her work has appeared in leading journals such as American Political Science Review, International Organization, International Affairs, International Theory, International Studies Quarterly, European Journal of International Relations, and Review of International Studies, among many others. She is the author of After Defeat: How the East Learned to Live with the West (Cambridge University Press, 2011), which examines international stigmatization and the integration of defeated non-Western powers into the international order. Her most recent book, Before the West: The Rise and Fall of Eastern World Orders (Cambridge University Press, 2022), develops an alternative global history of international relations centered on (Eur)Asia and reconsiders concepts of sovereignty, order, and the decline of states and civilizations from a broader global perspective. The book has received several awards from professional academic associations.