European Studies - University of Portsmouth

"As noted above, one significant implication of these findings is that secondary school students tend to associate EU politics with IR rather than ES. Indeed, it might be the case that IR better suits the study of EU politics, at least in the UK, given the Brexit process and the redefined relations that the UK will have with the individual member states of the EU. Moreover, a background of rising Euro-hostile attitudes and political forces across the EU as well as the possibility of further disintegration – albeit not likely for the present time – do enhance the need to understand and study Europe in a broader way. We have also pointed out that the relatively hostile environment towards the EU within British society might make IR more attractive to students, at least more so than European Studies."

How to Use Simulations to Boost Interest in Studying the EU | Crossroads Europe Karen Heard-Lauréote, Vladimir Bortun and Milan Kreuschitz explain how simulations can prove effective when used as university outreach tools to enhance secondary school pupils’ interest in pursuing higher education study related to the EU.

Great studentship opportunity at our university!

We are inviting applications for a fully-funded 3-year PhD or 4-year Master's and PhD studentship, to start in October 2019 on the issue of EU circular migration, citizenship and wellbeing of migrant families.

The studentship provides a unique opportunity for the successful candidate to become part of the ESRC SCDTP cohort, and the University of Portsmouth’s Centre for European and International Studies Research (CEISR) – which brings together world-leading research in Area Studies. The supervisors are Dr Annabel Tremlett , Dr Nora Siklodi and Professor Sasee Pallikadavath.

The studentship is funded by the ESRC South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership (SCDTP), a collaboration between the universities of Portsmouth, Southampton and Brighton.

For more information and how to apply, please consult the link here:

Fully-funded PhDs This PhD is a unique opportunity for the successful candidate to become part of the SCDTP cohort, and the University’s Centre for European and International Studies Research (CEISR) – which brings together world-leading research in Area Studies. The supervisors are Dr Annabel Tremlett , Dr ...

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS - FUNDED PHD OPPORTUNITY

ESRC-funded studentship for a project on the impact of Brexit on the transnational networking of British political parties
This is a fully-funded 3-year PhD or 4-year Master's and PhD studentship, to start in October 2019.
This PhD is a unique opportunity for the successful candidate to become part of the SCDTP cohort, and the University of Portsmouth’s Centre for European and International Studies Research (CEISR) – which brings together world-leading research in Area Studies. The supervisors for this project are Prof. Wolfram Kaiser, Dr Nora Siklodi and Dr Brigitte Leucht.
The studentship is funded by the ESRC South Coast Doctoral Training Partnership (SCDTP), a collaboration between the universities of Portsmouth, Southampton and Brighton.
The studentship is available to UK students only and covers tuition fees and an annual maintenance grant of £14,777 (2018/19 rate).

The project will explore how Brexit affects the formal and informal transnational ties of British political parties.
It will also study the experience of British parties which have lost representation in the EP, and how their reduced role in EU political parties or party organizations has impacted how they fulfill crucial functions as intermediary democratic bodies, such as in policy learning and transfer.

The project will combine quantitative and qualitative methods and will include an internship in a British and/or European political party HQ.
Before you apply, you'll need a University supervisor to support your SCDTP application -- so please contact the project supervisors before you submit an application.
The project will require you to discuss possible methods and research design as well as detailing how your skills, background and research interests match the project. It is therefore very important that you discuss the project with the supervisor.

Full instructions are given on the SCDTP application form and there are different word limits depending on whether you are applying for a 4-year Master's or 3-year PhD.
Please note: you will need to submit an online application to the University of Portsmouth plus an application for funding to the SCDTP. For more details, visit the SCDTP website: http://www.southcoastdtp.ac.uk/apply/
When applying to the University, please quote project code: HPSS4320119

Apply - South Coast DTP We are now accepting applications for funding commencing in the 2019/20 Academic Year The deadline for South Coast DTP funding applications is 24th January 2019, however you should check with your chosen institution/proposed supervisory team if there are any other... Read more

CALL FOR PAPERS

"Narratives of Europe’s Shared Past:
Between Singularity of the Holocaust and Totalitarian Paradigm"

International Conference, House of European History, Brussels,
Thursday-Friday, 16-17 May 2019
Call for Papers
Organizers: Wolfram Kaiser (University of Portsmouth) and Anette H. Storeide (NTNU Trondheim) in cooperation with the House of European History, Brussels

In times of growing political polarisation, the past seems to be more contested than ever even in apparently cohesive nation-states. With its problem-solving capacity, democratic quality and political legitimacy increasingly questioned, the European Union has become another battlefield for history and memory. On this battlefield a variety of institutions, networks and individuals promote their versions of the past as more shared or divided, to highlight common experiences or to tell stories about special paths. In Europe, the politics of history focuses especially on the continent’s experience during the twentieth century, the two world wars, the Holocaust and the continent’s division during the Cold War until 1989.
This conference explores attempts to trace, narrate and represent common elements of Europe’s historical experience during the twentieth century as shared history. Actors involved in such processes of narration and representation include political institutions at the European, national or sub-national levels, loosely organized networks, educational and commemorative institutions like memorial-sites, cultural institutions like museums or individual narrative entrepreneurs like historians with a strong media presence. Their strategies may be motivated by pragmatic reasons such as growing numbers of European visitors in national museums, for example, or they could be driven by ideational or ideological objectives such as shaping a new narrative of shared history as a foundational myth of European union or committed to the idea of learning from the past for the future.
This conference seeks to locate the search for and advocacy of, narratives and representations of twentieth century European history as shared history between two dominant narrative paradigms, the singularity of the Holocaust and the totalitarian paradigm. The singularity narrative highlights the European dimension of the destruction of European Jewry as a key focal point which has sometimes been propagated as a suitable foundation myth of European union especially since the 1990s. In contrast, the totalitarian paradigm emphasizes similarities of dictatorial regimes and their systems of rule and oppression occasionally creating a narrative of victimhood - a view that has been propagated especially forcefully by mnemonic entrepreneurs from East-Central Europe, who have highlighted the experience of suffering under Stalinism and communism until 1989.

For this conference we are inviting proposals for papers on contemporary actors and narratives of a shared European past which relate to these two paradigms. Papers can deal with any field from politics to academia, education, the media and a variety of cultural institutions. However, we expect all papers to address, in a structured manner, both the actors who produce narratives, and the narratives themselves, both to strengthen comparative perspectives and to facilitate a possible later publication in the form of an edited book or special issue.

Interested researchers should submit their paper proposal in one Word document with two elements, one abstract of no more than 300 words about the paper with information on its focus, key arguments and research basis, and one short biographical abstract with information on the author and his/her institutional affiliation and relevant ongoing research projects and/or publications.

Proposals have to be submitted to both organisers, Wolfram Kaiser ([email protected]) and Anette H. Storeide ([email protected]), no later than 5 January 2019. The successful applicants will be notified no later than 20 January 2019.

We can cover travel costs up to a maximum of 300 Euros and accommodation in Brussels for one night (16-17 May 2019). Our host in Brussels, the House of European History, will provide coffee, lunch and dinner for all paper-givers. It will also offer a guided tour for the paper-givers of its own museum narrative of Europe’s twentieth century history as shared history as part of the conference programme.

CALL FOR PAPERS

"Counter-narratives to Regional Cooperation:
Contesting European union"

Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research, 13-14 May 2019

Organisers: Professor Wolfram Kaiser (University of Portsmouth) and Dr Richard McMahon (University College London) in cooperation with the Käte Hamburger Kolleg/Centre for Global Cooperation Research (University of Duisburg-Essen)

At a time when transnational and international cooperation increasingly faces aggressive criticism and outright opposition, this conference will explore the particular case of counter-narratives to European integration. From Brazil to the Philippines and the US to Hungary, political polarisation and international tensions are growing. Intellectuals and organised social and political groups are using ‘communitarian’ narratives to produce a churn of new or reinvigorated and refined anti-cosmopolitan narratives. Whether motivated ideologically by right-wing ethnocentric nationalism or left-wing rejection of economic globalisation, they seek a partisan advantage in domestic and transnational politics, and try to reshape international relations in a more intergovernmental and autarkic manner. Democratically elected political leaders have strongly promoted and sought to legitimise such narratives, from US President Donald Trump’s nationalistic rhetoric and rejection of international treaties to Hungarian Prime Minister Victor Orban’s advocacy of ‘illiberal democracy’ as a challenge to the European Union’s normative order.
As the world’s most intensive experiment in regional integration, European union (as something that can be more than and different from the European Union as an organization) is a lightning rod and key test for the rising opponents of regional cooperation and globalism. Multiple referendum defeats for European integration, from the 1992 Danish rejection of the Maastricht Treaty to the 2016 Brexit vote, reflect the demise of the public’s earlier ‘permissive consensus’ about integration. The economic crisis since 2008 and the refugee crisis of 2015 have dramatically ramped up political contestation of European union. Populist groups and political parties no longer just criticise particular aspects of European union, such as monetary union, but often challenge the desirability of any organised form of cooperation. Brexit represents the triumph of this project in the UK.
The conference will focus on the narratives, their historical lineage since 1945, cultural conditionality, semantic forms and political objectives, but equally on the individual and collective actors behind them. We are interested in narrative entrepreneurs and counter-narratives to European union within Europe, whether nationally or transnationally drafted, developed and organised and whether they reject the EU as it stands, or any form of regional organisation in Europe. However, we are also interested in counter-narratives to European union from outside the EU, whether from neighbours such as President Putin and his Russian ‘trolls’ or from non-Europeans such as Trump.

We expect all papers to be based on original research. Moreover, all papers need to address, in a structured manner, both the actors who produce narratives and the narratives themselves, both to strengthen comparative perspectives and to facilitate a possible later collective publication in the form of an edited book or special issue.
Interested researchers should submit their paper proposal in one Word document with two elements:
• an abstract of your paper of no more than 300 words with information on its focus, key arguments and research basis
• a short biographical abstract with information on you, your institutional affiliation and relevant ongoing research projects and/or publications.

Please submit proposals to both organisers, Wolfram Kaiser ([email protected]) and Richard McMahon ([email protected]) no later than 5 January 2019. The successful applicants will be notified no later than 20 January 2019.

We can ordinarily cover travel costs up to a maximum of 300 Euros and accommodation in Duisburg for one night (13-14 May 2019) as well as subsistence during the conference.

Do you know bright and motivated students who want to deepen their knowledge about the EU, discuss current affairs with renowed experts and meet policy makers from top government institutions?
Help us spread the word with them! 📣 ➡️ www.essprague.eu ⬅️

European Studies - University of Portsmouth University of Sheffield - Global Opps School of Social Sciences, Nottingham Trent University ANU Centre for European Studies Institute for European Studies - University of Malta European Studies, Malmö University European Studies Maastricht Institute for European Studies - VUB Brussels Centre for European Studies at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow

New scandal in Brussels at the very top of the Commission and of the EPP as well. Is this a sign of wider increasing divisions within the EU establishment? And what effect might this have on the Commission's legitimacy in its dealings with the UK over Brexit or with Poland and Hungary over the question of the rule of law?

EU parliament united against Selmayr promotion MEPs rallied against the stellar promotion of the new EU commission's secretary general, amid broader fears that the institution's integrity was in shatters, further weakening its credibility when tackling rule of law issues.

Open registration to an exciting upcoming event:
'Brussels, we have a problem: Rethinking justice within the European Union', International Conference at Witten/Herdecke University Germany, 08 - 10 June 2018.

EUROPEUM Institute for European Policy – a Prague-based think-tank specialized in EU affairs - organizes its 16th annual European Summer School for university students in July 2018.

The programme focuses on current challenges that the European Union faces and explores scenarios for its future developments. European Summer School is organized under the auspices of the European Commission Representation in the Czech Republic, in cooperation with Prague College and Faculty of Social Sciences of Charles University in Prague.

The European Summer School under the title "Europe in Transition: Exploring EU's Futures" will take place in Prague July 14-24 2018. All the necessary information, including the programme, is available on their website

European Summer School Prague European summer school in Prague is an intensive 10 days learning program focused on the European integration.

Very short notice this time but hoping people can make it. :)

Join us this Friday from 5pm in Dennis Sciama, Room 1.12, to talk about the first year of the Trump presidency and its impact for global politics.