The Limits of EUrope: Challenging the Crisis of European Integration
About
A UACES Research Network since 2019.
Based on the success of our conference in Carlton House Terrace in London, UK (October 2018), UACES funding grant helped creating this research network. It allowed to cement this international, interdisciplinary, and extra-disciplinary group, which combines views and voices from across the political spectrum. The network grew from our initial concern that there is an urgent, but very much under-recognised, need for collaborative research into what "EUrope" is, and should be, in a time of rapid and potentially traumatic change across the entire continent.
Frustrated with the fragmentation of academic approaches to "EUrope", by the weak dialogue between academic and non-academic sectors, and especially by dwindling opportunities for people with different normative perspectives on "EUrope" to talk to each other in a civil forum, this group was created. We believe that there is an increasing and urgent need for a critical dialogue between different disciplines in EU studies, between academia and the "real world", and most importantly, between Europhiles and Eurosceptics. We hope that our network has been providing a forum for fostering a much-needed dialogue between different nations, different career stages, between academics and non-academics, and crucially, between different normative visions of what "EUrope" is - and what it should be.
The key objective of our new network is to provide events and publication opportunities, which allow an exchange of diverse opinions and views on the EU and its policies, but, of course, membership in the Network is not a commitment to any specific research activity. The network combines academics at different levels of their academic career, as well as members from beyond academia. These members are drawn from policymaking, political advocacy, commerce and industry, civil society, and journalism. Russell Foster (King’s College London, UK), Jan Grzymski (Centre of Migration Research at the University of Warsaw, Poland) and Monika Brusenbauch Meislová (Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic) are the Network Conveners. The network offers regional balance (initially combining researchers from ten countries across the EU), gender balance, and a combination of leading renowned scholars in the field (emeritus professors, Chairs, and senior academics) with younger scholars (early career lecturers, postdoctoral fellows, and PhD students).
The Network’s first publication is entitled “The Limits of EUrope”. It is a special edition of the journal ‘Global Discourse’, edited by Russell Foster and Jan Grzymski, which brings together specialists from academia, civil advocacy, journalism, commerce and industry, charities, think-tanks, and policymakers, to address the urgencies facing the EU. Significantly, the Network and this special edition bring together different normative perspectives of the EU from passionate Europhiles to passionate Eurosceptics.
Since 2019, the Network’s activities has been concentrated on the relation between populism and technocracy, firstly discussed at UACES Annual Conference in Lisbon, Portugal (September 2019). Conclusive results of these network collaborative research are going to be discussed at UACES Virtual Conference in September 2020 and published in the special issue of Journal of Contemporary European Research (JCER), edited by Jan Grzymski, Russell Foster and Monika Brusenbauch Meislová, and forthcoming in early 2021. This special issue investigates a growing gulf between “populist” and “technocratic” systems of knowledge production within the EUropean politics. With an aim to answer how consensus-based EUropean decision-making can be rendered (more) legitimate, the special issue is envisioned to be addressing those challenges in six selected crucial areas in contemporary EUrope: Technocrats and the Public, (Dis-)Integration, (Anti-)Political, (Mis-)Trust, (Non-)Science, (Mis-)Communication. It will be reflected in the fifteen papers dealing with the clash between populist and technocratic legitimation.
If you would like to know more about the network or join, please email:
· brusenbauch.meislova@mail.muni.cz
The Limits of EUrope | Event Report
In 2018, the Network hosted a small conference in London Westminster, financially supported by King’s College London, Lazarski University Warsaw, a UACES Small Event Grant, the Leverhulme Trust, and the Polish Association of European Studies.
It brought together the special edition’s participants; academic and non-academic alike. Over two days, each academic paper was presented by its author in a dedicated, chaired panel. The invited non-academic expert then gave their verbal response to the paper, illustrating points of agreement and contention as well as suggestions from relevant policymaking, legal, and industrial perspectives, before opening to group discussion by all contributors.
This innovative format produced very fruitful and critical discussions, allowing genuinely interdisciplinary engagement as well as contrasting different views on the challenges and opportunities the EU currently faces.
Read the full report on Ideas on Europe.
Images by Julian Anderson Photography
- Recent blog post: The Balkans In, on the Road, or out of the European Union | Event Report
- YouTube Video - Meet the Network: Network Conveners speaking about network rationale, ambitions and plans, including special issue of JCER on populism and technocracy
- Non-traditional Panel at UACES 2019 in Lisbon: The Limits of EUrope