The 2027 CES conference invites scholars from different disciplines to examine the choices shaping Europe today and to explore what it would mean to truly make Europe secure. Contributions using diverse and interdisciplinary lenses are welcome, especially those addressing questions such as: How could European citizens genuinely benefit from European alternatives in sectors currently dominated by global firms? How much of the world’s resources and markets must Europe continue to command to sustain its prosperity? Is prioritizing defence over social security a necessary trade-off, or a false one? Can Europe enhance its security and resilience without addressing its structural inequalities? What are the costs of underestimating the threats from external actors, and what are the dangers of exaggerating them?

The Netherlands offers a compelling point of departure for these conversations. Throughout its history, it has pursued multiple, sometimes contradictory, paths to security and prosperity. It imagines itself a kikkerlandje – ‘small frog country’ that depends on the strength of its alliances and international laws for survival. Yet as a colonial power itrepeatedly bent those same laws in pursuit of self-interest. At the forefront of climate vulnerability, it has kept itself above water by alternatively holding the sea back, letting the water flow through, and making sure that every child learns to swim. Leiden University, our host institution, has long presented itself as a bastion of freedom that sheltered persecuted scholars and resisted occupying powers, even as it trained colonial administrators and built collections and knowledge systems deeply embedded in the Dutch Empire. Reimagining Europe’s future also requires confronting the complex configurations of power, prosperity and connection that emerged from such troubled pasts.

In this spirit of reckoning and renewal, proposals are invited for panels and papers that approach the question of security from a wide range of historical, regional, and disciplinary perspectives. Contributions that draw on alternative conceptions of security are strongly encouraged, as are those that examine how past responses to insecurity may illuminate, complicate, or constrain the possibilities for the present and future. Particular welcome is given to contributions grounded in epistemic humility; work that asks what might be learned in and about Europe from parts of the world used to living with uncertainty and that never enjoyed the illusion of being at its centre.