WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Economic trends, social trajectories and policies of identities in post communist capitalism. I NTRODUCTION Brigita Schmögnerová The 4 th international conference of PhD students"My PhD 2010" organized by Frie­drich Ebert Stiftung, Bratislava and Proforum(Progressive Forum) and this year in part­nership with the European Trade Institute(ETUI) and Otto Brenner Stiftung and EurActive as a media partner took place in Bratislava in October1-2, 2010. The attraction of the“My PhD 2010” to PhD students was reinforced by a generous offer of the ETUI to provide a three month traineeship in the area of European labour in its headquarters in Brussels to the most successful applicant and the possibility to publish the best conference papers as a ETUI working paper in Journal for Labour and Social Affairs in Eastern Europe. Students in the field of social sciences dealing with the transition in Central and Eastern Europe had an excellent opportunity to present and discuss their papers in eight panels under the supervision of distinguished senior academics. As in the previous PhD conferences the organisers aimed at promoting a multidisciplinary dialogue of social sci­ences, assisting PhD students from different European universities in comparing quality of their research results and in establishing a knowledge based network. The"My PhD 2010" conference’s focus was on future: on economic and social trends in post-communist capitalism asking the urgent question"Where do we go from here?" It is not a surprise that most of the attention was paid to the situation in the post­transition states of Central and Eastern Europe although some students mapped the situa­tion in other post-communist countries like Albania as well. The focus on post-transition states in the CEE was significant in the studies irrespective they provided an analysis at na­tional, regional or micro regional, sectoral or micro-economic levels. The publication is a selection of papers submitted to and discussed at the conference. Few papers discuss application of different economic or political concepts in the CEE. Departing from the Varieties of Capitalism concept(Hall& Soskice 2001) Pavol Baboš applies quantitative methods to identify what type of capitalism has emerged in the central and eastern European countries. Antonio Andreoni in his paper„From transition to integra­tion through institutional innovation” provides an analysis of what he identifies as a Schumpeterian“destructive construction” experienced by CEECs, in particular from 1989 to the enlargements of the European Union in 2004 and 2007. It is encouraging that the indicator“GDP per capita” is increasingly not recognised as the only indicator of development in the post- communist countries. There are three studies included in the publication that try to better understand the complexity of the 5