While Rosetta is making the headlines in outer space, bringing unprecedented publicity to European space policy, the EU-Asia Institute pursued a more theoretical and conceptual approach to the field in its 5th ESSCA SPACE POLICY WORKSHOP that was held on the school’s Paris campus on 25 October 2014.
Under the title ‘Theorizing space and dependent concepts – potentials for a European space policy’, Thomas Hoerber convened members of his standing group in space policy research for his annual workshop. On top of the agenda: the preparation of the edited book on European Space Policy in the renowned Routledge UACES book series, forthcoming in spring 2015. Two papers were presented that will feature in this volume:
- ‘The contribution of the European Court of Justice in the development of the EU space policy’, by Antonella Forganni from the EU-Asia Institute;
- ‘Satellites and farming – the reframing of agriculture and agricultural machinery within EU space policy, by Ulrich Adam (CEMA, European Agricultural Machinery).
The overall topic of this workshop was however tailored towards the next publication project, an edited book in the Space Policy Series of the European Space Policy Institute (ESPI) with the Springer publishing house. A number of the papers presented at the workshop will be included in this publication, such as ‘A wider Governance of the Space Policy Framework’, by Lorna Ryan (London City University); ‘The Quest for a European Identity – A Common Ground in Space?’, by Fabian Kienzler (Universität Passau); ‘Discourse Theory in Space Research’, by workshop convener Thomas Hoerber, who was also happy to welcome three visitors, among whom Liliane Umubyeyi from Sciences-Po Paris, who will also teach at ESSCA on EU-Africa relations in the future.
With UACES Re-EUnion and ESPI funding accorded for a conference celebrating the 40th anniversary of the ESA Convention on 29/30 May 2015, the group has taken another dynamic turn for consolidating space policy as a thematic field of Europan Studies.
