The research project “Scaling the Transnational: Entangled Political Imaginaries and Practices in East and West Europe (STEPPE)” invites doctoral students and young postdocs to apply for up to eight fellowships with a mobility grant totalling up to 2.500€.
The EU is facing immense political challenges. In many countries, democratic principles are being questioned and an “illiberal policy” is being explicitly positioned as a defence of national values against the “liberal values of the West”. “Liberal democracies” and “illiberal regimes” are thus juxtaposed, and old dichotomies are revived: while Eastern Europe is accused of a democratic and rule of law deficit, Western Europe appears to be merely interested in maintaining its discursive and political dominance. This East/West opposition lends a geopolitical and territorial dimension to the crisis of confidence
between the European states.
Against this background the project “Scaling the Transnational: Entangled Political Imaginaries and Practices in East and West Europe” (STEPPE) seeks to nuance this picture by analysing the transnational dimensions of political movements and ideological
conflicts in Europe. It questions the dichotomy between Western and Eastern Europe as a category of analysis for understanding historical and current social developments and political conflicts. In so doing, the project offers an innovative take on studying the
transnational engagement of political movements and ideological paradigms across the symbolic dividing line of Western and Eastern Europe.
STEPPE focuses on multi-directional transfers and interactions, transnational imaginaries of the self and the other, and the underlying experiences that came to shape the European public sphere in the 21st century. Thus, it seeks to accentuate the politics of East-West entanglement as key, but often overlooked, component of European political culture and social imaginary.
Four thematic directions structure the project: three forms of ideological transfer (liberal, illiberal, leftist) as well as transnational academic networks that both observe and shape the exchange.
These four main focuses are assigned to the respective partner institutions as follows:
- Illiberal movements (CEU-Democracy Institute, Budapest/ Hungary)
- The new Left (New Europe College NEC, Bucharest/ Romania)
- Rule-of-law activism (Institute of Political Science at Leipzig University, Leipzig/Germany)
- Transnational academic transfer and social change (Centre Marc Bloch, Berlin/Germany)
The programme addresses doctoral students and young postdocs from the humanities and social sciences whose research topics match with the questions addressed by STEPPE.
The fellows will be associated with one of the institutions that constitute the project network (Democracy Institute at the Central European University (Budapest / Hungary), New Europe College (Bucharest / Romania), Leipzig University (Leipzig/ Germany), and Centre Marc Bloch (Berlin / Germany)). They will be actively involved in all activities of the STEPPE research network. The fellowship programme provides funding
for travel to the partner institutes for research and training purposes.
The fellowships will start on 1 December 2024 and will end on 31 March 2026. An extension of the association and funding opportunities is intended as a follow-up application for an EU research funding is envisaged.