I'm a researcher in the social and political sciences. At the moment, I'm working at the Department of Political and Social Sciences of the European University Institute (EUI) in Florence (well, strictly speaking it is located in San Domenico di Fiesole). There, I'm working on a PhD research project which has the provisional title: "Imagining Europe: Conceptualizations of Europe in a cross-national comparison across social groups and networks". You can download the research plan (April 2010) here (pdf), and here is an image that displays the general strategy of the project.
The central assumption of this project is that ‘Europe’ can mean something completely different to various individuals not only in different contexts and circumstances, but also according to individual characteristics and experiences. To give some examples: for some people, in certain contexts, ‘Europe’ may represent an image of modernity. For others in other contexts, it is an expression of cosmopolitan ideals. For others still, it symbolizes all that is wrong with globalisation. Additionally, in some cases, ‘Europe’ may feel practically synonymous with the EU while in other instances these may be perceived to be two radically different concepts (Eder, 2009, p.435).
The question that remains is who conceptualizes Europe in which way? If we argue that a transnational public sphere is emerging in Europe (Risse, 2010), then how has this changed the way ideas spread within this sphere? More importantly, perhaps, which ideas are spread rather than others, and among whom? What is the ‘Europeanized Europe’ all about, and what does it look like for different groups within different European societies? How are these discourses embedded in processes of identification with (the) nation-state(s) and with Europe (cf. Díez Medrano, 2003; Risse, 2010)? And what difference do individuals’ (transnational) social networks make with regard to their conceptualizations of ‘Europe’?
The current project will go into all of these questions, comparing three strongly differing countries in Europe: Estonia, the Netherlands, and Italy. A central thesis is that 'higher' social economic groups (the 'elite', if you will) are shifting their value orientations towards a globalized, European frame of reference. 'Lower' socio-economic groups, on the contrary, tend to respond to globalization and Europeanization by realigning their views along the lines of national identifications. These opposite movements create (political, cultural, social) rifts in European societies - these rifts is what I will be researching.
On a general level, the central question that I will answer in this project can be formulated as follows:
Which meanings are attributed to ‘Europe’, and according to which patterns of individual, contextual, and social network characteristics do these meanings occur?
Dividing this question further into sub-questions, this assumes the logic that a person’s particular imagination of ‘Europe’ (Q1) can be explained through an analysis of her individual characteristics (Q2), the composition and nature of her social network (Q3), and the specific context in which she finds herself (Q4). More explicitly put, this implies the following four sub-questions:
>> see my CV
>> download a summary of my project (pdf)
>> download my current research plan (pdf)
>> read / download my master's thesis
