Update | APROPOS X iASK Summer University

APROPOS team

From June 22–27, 2025, the Institute of Advanced Studies Kőszeg (iASK) hosted its 30th International Summer University in Kőszeg, Hungary, bringing together scholars, practitioners, and policy thinkers from across Europe and beyond to address the pressing geopolitical and societal challenges of our time.

Isotta Ricci Bitti, Managing Director of APROPOS and the Open European Dialogue, took part as a guest speaker, delivering a presentation on Healing Polarisation through Dialogue and Trust-Building: Europe’s Invisible Infrastructure.

Her contribution formed part of the panel 'Breaking the Rules: Geopolitical Rivalries and the Making of a New Global Order', where she was joined by Ferenc Miszlivetz, iASK, Emil Brix, Diplomatische Akademie Wien, András Hettyey, Andrássy Universität Budapest and Sean Cleary, Strategic Concepts, South Africa.

The discussion explored shifting global power dynamics and the erosion of the post-Cold War, rules-based international order, rising strategic competition among major powers, including the U.S., China, and Russia, and examined how new frameworks of governance and cooperation are being negotiated in an increasingly fragmented international system. In her intervention, Isotta posed a fundamental question: What has dialogue got to do with geopolitics and the global order? 

Despite the gravity implied by the panel’s title, she offered an alternative perspective drawn from APROPOS’s work with the Open European Dialogue: political dialogue as strategic human infrastructure. This form of infrastructure, she argued, is the foundation for the relationships and trust that allow us to act together, especially in contexts marked by mistrust and polarisation.

Her core message challenged the notion that dialogue across divides is naïve. Instead, she positioned it as critical preparation for ambitious and urgent challenges, resilience building in the face of democratic backsliding, and an essential capacity that demands sustained investment.

In a reordering world, she called for reimagining our infrastructures of security so they not only guard against threats but actively foster trust, interdependence, and the ability to act together. Rooted in dialogue and collaboration rather than control, such security becomes a living framework for resilience, capable of holding societies steady through turbulence and change.