Network

Date: 01.01.2025 – ongoing

The "Europe in the World" project aims to foster academic exchange and knowledge dissemination on Europe's global role. It integrates teaching, workshops, and public events involving scholars, students, policymakers, and citizens. Key activities include lecture series, Model United Nations seminars, excursions to Brussels, and an online course on the EU. The project also emphasizes research collaborations, with a focus on publishing results through peer-reviewed journals and international conferences. The initiative is coordinated by Fulda University of Applied Sciences, supported by effective project management and extensive outreach through digital platforms and social media.

Date: 01.09.2024 – 31.08.2026

The D-EMU project, funded under a Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowship, investigates how democratic elites perceive the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU) of the EU. Led by Dr. Anja Thomas, this research seeks to understand the views and attitudes of political elites across Europe towards EMU reforms and the impact these perceptions have on EU policy-making processes, particularly in areas such as fiscal coordination and monetary stability.

Date: 01.02.2024 – 31.01.2027

The Continuous Construction of Resilient Social Contracts Through Societal Transformations (CO3) project is dedicated to strengthening the political and social resilience of democracies in the face of societal challenges, crises, and anti-democratic tendencies. Through rigorous research, innovative methodologies and extensive stakeholder engagement, we promote and develop a more democratic, inclusive, and open model of social contracts for contemporary societies.

Date: 01.03.2021 – 31.08.2023

Practising Transnational Politics (PATRAPO) is a project led by researchers from Fulda University of Applied Sciences, Autonomous University Madrid, and Zagreb University, with the associate partner Mac Ewan University, Edmonton. The project goal is to develop open access transnational teaching kits and a handbook for online blended learning seminars that train students for the participation in United Nations Model Games (MUN). 

Based on previous experiences both in MUN and in EU projects, the partners will jointly develop, establish and implement the following elements in their universities, to be carried out in a yearly rhythm:

• a teaching kit for preparative joint blended MUN training seminars (1st semester of each academic year) at all participating institutions, including: teaching curricula, seminar plans, material, content, explanation, organization, training video collection 
• a teaching kit for joint blended or real life MUN (2nd semester of each academic year) including: procedure, technical solutions, organizational advice, and detailed description of “how-to” 
• a handbook including a manual (intellectual property of the partners) and user advice for third parties for the two teaching kits. 
• four short time staff trainings: the project is a learning system including further training for teachers. 
• blended student mobility sustains the attendance of virtual and life MUN.  

Date: Since 01.01.2022

PARI is an inter- and transdisciplinary research institute that conducts and promotes research in three fields:

• The Cold War and its implications for today
• Border Studies
• Democracy and the Global Order

PARI unites junior und senior researchers in the social and cultural sciences, carries out research projects, organizes symposia, conferences and workshops and offers doctoral, postdoctoral and senior fellowships as well as conference grants.

Date: 01.09.2020 – 30.09.2024

The Jean Monnet Network “Debating Europe” uses debate as a methodology for

• spreading knowledge on the European Union (EU);
• gaining knowledge about citizens’ opinions;
• enhancing exchange between citizens, students, academics and EU practitioners.

The process of debating enhances the legitimacy of the EU by regaining citizen’s trust in their ability to use political discussions to influence the policy-making process.

Date: 01.09.2019 – 30.09.2023

The Jean Monnet Chair project “BridgE” of Prof. Dr. Claudia Wiesner has the thematic focus and aim to help bridging the gap between the European Union and its citizens by enhancing active debates on the EU.

Despite the efforts of EU and national institutions as well as intermediate institutions and actors, research as well as opinion surveys diagnose a growing gap between what has been termed “EU elites” and EU citizens. The European Union has a legitimacy problem, support rates have been decreasing during the peak of the financial crisis, as the respective Eurobarometer data clearly show, and despite the economic situation improving, votes for populist, extremist, anti-EU and anti-democrat parties and movements are on the rise throughout the EU. At the same time, the Europeanisation of politics and decision making continues to impact and transform the national democratic systems of the member states.

The work programme for the Chair takes stock of this situation. The primary aim is to debate the EU with a) students and b) citizens that are neither engaged in EU-oriented civil-society organisations, nor in political parties, in order to bridge the gap between citizens and the EU.

In order to do so, teaching, citizen focus group discussions, public events, and research activities will be integrated. The results will deliver well-based findings about the sources of contemporary EU-criticism and be disseminated in public discussion events, academic conferences, and via publications directed at academics and EU practitioners in the sense of EU stakeholders, EU officials, and EU and national politicians. The work will help to bridge the gap between EU elites and average citizens.

In all this, a particular focus is set on MA students and young researchers, including them into the research process in teaching research seminars and additionally in offering them training courses in cooperation with Fulda Graduate School in the Social Sciences. The work plan of the Chair follows three objectives (Teaching and Debating Europe, Networking and Communication, Dissemination). 

Date: 01.09.2018 – 30.09.2022

OpenEUdebate is Jean Monnet network composed of academic institutions (UAM, ULB, VUB, SNSPA) and of academic institutions and experts in EU politics and policies (Agenda Pública) co-financed by the EU Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency (EACEA). This network bridges academic and practical knowledge on EU policies to create a transnational bottom up dialogue on the EU. It intends to match EU’s policies with politics at the national level through a platform connecting the debate in the EU institutions and transnational civil society platforms with national publics by connecting existing knowledge on EU issues with the growing demand for evidence-based debates. The network works with opinion leaders, think tanks, academics and civil society organisations of all political tendencies who share the need to connect analysis and policy to renew public debate on Europe in different member states.

The Centre for Intercultural and European Studies (CINTEUS), researches developments and issues of high academic and social significance in the present and foreseeable future.

The research foci comprise sociological research on globalisation, migration, inequality and interculturality; research into the economic science aspects of international and transnational issues; research into EU integration and EU policy from the political-science perspective; legal research in the fields of comparative and international labour, social and migration law as well as European law; research in the fields interculturality with respect to communication.

CINTEUS also functions as an umbrella for diverse activities in the fields of social and cultural sciences including knowledge transfer, support of junior researchers, career counselling and continuing education at Fulda University of Applied Sciences. The Centre's activities include externally funded projects, conferences and series of lectures, as well as a CINTEUS series of publications.

Political concepts have a key role in and for political science: they serve in describing, interpreting, analysing, explaining, and understanding its research objects. Concepts, first, serve as analytical categories. But it is a key insight of conceptual history that political concepts are not stable, they do not have fixed meanings. Rather, they are themselves controversial and contested in their meanings, normative colour or tone. Conceptual changes often relate to political processes themselves. Thus, concepts are pivots, factors and indicators for political and social changes.

The European Consortium for Political Research (ECPR) is the leading scholarly society for political scientists in Europe. It has over 300 institutional members in nearly 50 countries, which amounts to a global community of tens of thousands of scholars. 

The ECPR Standing Group “Political Concepts” focuses on the role of political concepts in political science in all possible respects, namely in their function both as analytical categories and as objects of political controversies. Such an approach is important for nearly all the sub-disciplines of political science. The Standing Group is therefore open to scholars from all sub-disciplines sharing a focal interest in the role of political concepts.

Aims & Objectives

• The primary aim is to create a network and a stable setting for Conceptual Research within the framework of ECPR. This group connects a broad network of scholars whose work is related to the role of political concepts and/or the issues of conceptual change. It also serves as a forum for intellectual exchange between researchers from all political science sub-disciplines and neighbouring disciplines, such as history and cultural studies.

Activities

• Maintaining a website with general information on the SG and regular updates on its activities.
• Keeping members in touch and distributing relevant info (CfP, Jobs, Publications) through a bi-monthly Newsletter and mailing list.
• Organizing or supporting sections/panels/workshops at ECPR, IPSA and other large international events.
• Organizing independent international workshops and conferences.
• Encouraging and facilitating joint project applications and publication activities.
• Contributing to research trainings and summer schools in the field of political concepts, in cooperation with the existing History of Concepts Group and the CONCEPTA doctoral school

Organisation

The Standing Group is run by a team, including a Chair and three Steering Committee members, representing different EU countries and universities. The team meets at least once a year at the ECPR General Conference. Each member of the Standing Group can suggest events to be carried out on behalf of the Group, if they are approved by the Steering Committee.

Chair:

• Claudia Wiesner (Fulda University of Applied Sciences), Claudia.Wiesner@sk.hs-fulda.de

Steering Committee:

• Anthoula Malkopoulou (Lund University), Anthoula.Malkopoulou@svet.lu.se 
• Elena Garcia-Guitián (Autonomus University of Madrid), Elena.Garcia@uam.es
• Taru Happala (Autonomus University of Madrid), Taru.Haapala@uam.es

Icon by Becris from the Noun Project