International conference.
By 1983, socialist governments had gained power across Mediterranean Europe. While this period saw a prominent shift to the right in many of the Western countries with Thatcher, Kohl and Reagan coming to power, socialist premiers such as Gonzalez, Craxi, Papandreou, Soares, and Mitterrand loomed large on the European and Cold War scene. The proposed conference will engage critically with the Socialist period of Southern Europe and evaluate its impact on France, Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain in the 1980s. Participating scholars will be asked to employ comparative analytical approaches across the five countries in order to examine similarities and differences at the socio-economic and political levels. The two day conference will consist of four panels and will culminate in a roundtable discussion examining the legacies of the Southern European socialist era on the respective countries and the European and international system.