This symposium is a follow-up to the 2019 CEEISA/ISA conference ‘International Relations in the Age of Anxiety’ held at the Faculty of Political Science, University of Belgrade, Serbia, in June 2019. The central piece in the symposium is the keynote address by Bahar Rumelili on the untapped potential of existentialism in IR followed by highly engaged responses by Felix Berenskötter, Karl Gustafsson, Brent Steele and Andreja Zevnik. In this introduction we first describe the context in which we organised the conference and our motivations to choose the topic of the age of anxiety. We also reflect on how the global pandemic, which erupted in January 2020, made our topic more relevant than ever before. We then briefly introduce each piece and discuss what we see as the key questions they raise.

本次研讨会是 2019 年 6 月在塞尔维亚贝尔格莱德大学政治学院举行的 2019 年 CEEISA/ISA 会议“焦虑时代的国际关系”的后续会议。研讨会的核心是主题演讲Bahar Rumelili 就 IR 中存在主义的未开发潜力发表了讲话，随后 Felix Berenskötter、Karl Gustafsson、Brent Steele 和 Andreja Zevnik 做出了高度参与的回应。在本介绍中，我们首先描述了我们组织会议的背景以及我们选择焦虑时代主题的动机。我们还反思了 2020 年 1 月爆发的全球大流行如何使我们的主题比以往任何时候都更加相关。然后我们简要介绍每篇文章并讨论我们认为他们提出的关键问题。