Research projects

This interdisciplinary working group initiated by Dr Amelie Kutter aims to exchange and create synergies on research related to climate crisis, sustainability, the anthropocene and the relationship between nature and culture in the social sciences and the humanities. The working group is currently in the consolidation phase. 

 

Project funding: German-Polish Science Foundation
Term: November 2020-April 2021
Leadership: Dr. Anja Hennig, Institute for European Studies at the European University Viadrina

Project partners: 
Prof. Dr. Jörg Hackmann, Institute of History at the University of Szczecin
Prof. Dr Krzysztof Ruchniewicz, Willy Brandt Centre for German Studies at the University of Wrocław

1. INTERDISCIPLINARY – TRANSNATIONAL – REGIONAL
The transnational project emerges from the field of interdisciplinary public history research. Our starting hypothesis is that contemporary interpretations of history can be read as positioning in favour of or against the liberal-democratic project. Based on this assumption, we will analyse the role of the local or regional level in terms of places, actors and policies in the conflict over liberal democratic perspectives, asking how it relates to national and transnational historical narratives.

2. WORKSHOPS PUBLIC DISCUSSIONS
The project is explorative and participatory in nature. It is based on three thematically focussed historical-political workshop discussions, which will take place between November 2020 and April 2021 in Frankfurt (Oder), Wroclaw and Szczecin. They will each consist of an internal and a public event part, in which perspectives from academia, politics and cultural (memory) practices can be discussed with regard to connections of regionality and public history in the dispute about liberal democratic principles.

3. NETWORK FOR RESEARCH AND TEACHING
The project aims to stimulate a German-Polish research and teaching network which takes into account the fundamentally different war experiences, memories, and politics of remembrance in Poland and Germany. In order to explore shared mechanisms and trends in contemporary historical interpretations, these will be placed within the broader context of international discourse. The initiative seeks to unite students and educators from both countries who share similar interests, fostering collaboration in teaching and learning, including innovative online formats.

 

 

 

 

The current understanding of "Europeanisation“ is still characterised by teleological and linear ideas, increasing integration and progress. However, moments of intensive European development are and have always been characterised by ambivalence and contradiction. The research project "Ambivalences of Europeanisation“ aims to understand and systematise these ambivalences as the core of Europeanisation.

The starting hypothesis of the project is that modernity and Europe have been closely linked concepts since their common genesis in the 18th century. Since ambivalences represent the necessary complementary counterpart of modernity as an order, they also constitute the core of Europeanisation. In this sense, it was not peaceful moments, but rather crises, conflicts, resistance and indeterminacy that have significantly influenced the historical development of Europe.

Tendencies of homogenisation and differentiation, integration and disintegration as well as synchronisation/acceleration and desynchronisation/deceleration are simultaneously present and form the motor of a fundamentally non-linear Europeanisation. Ambivalences are analysed in the project in three dimensions as empirical phenomena: symbolic meanings, historical complexity and institutional practices are the focus of a comprehensive, interdisciplinary and non-teleological understanding of Europeanisation.

The collective volume Ambivalences of Europeanisation. Beiträge zur Neukonzeptionalisierung der Geschichte und Gegenwart Europas, edited by Timm Beichelt, Clara Frysztacka, Claudia Weber and Susann Worschech, was published by Franz Steiner Verlag in 2020.

Project editors: Timm Beichelt, Clara Frysztacka, Claudia Weber, Susann Worschech