Research at the Centre for the Study of Wider Europe
Building on existing disciplinary strengths at NUI Maynooth, the research agenda of the Centre for the Study of Wider Europe is truly pan-European in scope. We provide a unique scholarly environment where research on Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe is produced and discussed. Ours is the only such academic centre on the island of Ireland exclusively focused on wider Europe, and, as such, we are keen to develop links with a broad range of actors within the worlds of academia, public policy, media and civil society.
Our research activity also highlights Ireland’s rapidly developing links with Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe. These include the full panoply of diplomatic and commercial relationships (both within the European Union and beyond), patterns of foreign direct investment, burgeoning civil society relationships and networks of social movements. Equally our research focuses on the different ways in which relatively new issues such as migration are having an impact on Ireland and on the discursive and social constructions of migration within Irish society.
The key research themes which the CSWE pursues are:
Inclusion and exclusion in the context of European integration and enlargement
Rural and urban transformations in post-1989 Europe
Identity, memory, and culture in wider Europe
Ireland’s new relationships with Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe
The quality of research undertaken by members of the CSWE has consistently been recognized by academic bodies and the policy-making community. John O'Brennan has held fellowships from the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) and the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (IRCHSS) and been awarded funding by the Department of Foreign Affairs and the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES). Christian Noack has been awarded funding by the Volkswagenstiftung for a comparative research project "from Kolkhoz to Jamaat". The project will analyse the transformation of rural Islamic communities in the former USSR, 1960s-2000s. It entails collaboration with research teams in France, Germany, Russia, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Aphra Kerr and Rebecca King O' Riain have been awarded funding by the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland to examine, amongst other things, media use by immigrant communities in Ireland including the Polish community. Rebecca King O’ Riain has been awarded funding by the National Consultative Committee on Racism and Interculturalism (NCCRI), the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) and the Broadcasting Commission of Ireland amongst other awards. Patty Gray's research on Russia has been funded in part by the Fulbright program, the MacArthur Foundation, and the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, and is currently funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation through the European Science Foundation EUROCORES Programme
CSWE Postgraduates have also attained significant funding awards. Darragh Farrell, Seamus M. Coll and Zsuzsanna Zarka have been awarded IRCHSS Government of Ireland scholarships. David Jo Murphy holds a John Hume Fellowship from NUI Maynooth
RESEARCH THEMES IN DETAIL
Inclusion and exclusion in the context of European integration and enlargement
The eastern enlargement of the European Union, completed on 1 January 2007 with the accessions of Bulgaria and Romania has arguably helped to move Europe’s centre of gravity eastwards and certainly contributed to a re-configuration of some of the core dynamics of the European integration process.
Given our pan-European focus the Centre is well placed to contribute to debates about the nature and significance of these changes and the challenges facing the European Union as it contemplates further expansion to the western Balkans and Turkey, and seeks to develop a more stable relationship with Russia.
CSWE staff are at the forefront of research examining the nature and content of EU enlargement policy and the challenges it confronts in wider Europe. As we go forward we will provide additional expertise to develop research in this area and contribute to public policy debates on enlargement and neighbourhood issues.
Rural and urban transformations in post-1989 Europe
The dramatic events of 1989, which led to the dissolution of the Soviet Union and an epochal political transformation of Europe, also set in train an accelerated process of cultural and social change in Eastern Europe and Russia. In particular, the phenomenal upheavals of the late 1980s brought to light the sharp contrast between rural communities and urban societies in Eastern Europe. During much of the 1990s, transitional studies focused on contemporary changes, sometimes at the expense of historical perspective. The CSWE connects a broad range of academic disciplines available at NUIM and looks at these painful transitions in a broader time frame; it integrates political, anthropological, sociological and historical approaches to the problems of rural-urban relations. Our research also seeks to situate transition within broader theoretical paradigms relating to rural and urban space, identity perspectives, and socio-economic cultures. We are engaged in analysis of, inter alia, the emergence and evolution of organized crime in wider Europe, population movements both within and between states in the region, youth culture and emerging subcultures, new social movements, and patterns of economic development and socio-economic outcomes.
Almost 20 years after the momentous changes, many people in Wider Europe still have difficulties coping with the transition from an ossified socialism to a pluralist, yet sometimes unstable political system. One of the basic issues is the complex interplay between an agricultural society with a veneer of urbanity and an urban society with a rural underlayer. On the one hand, agriculture in socialist countries was been the target of continued social engineering, on the other even large cities retained their rural identity due to repeated waves of rural migration. Research projects by CSWE members investigate the experiences of smallholder private farmers and explore the links between collectivisation, agricultural modernisation, and the emergence of radical rural Islamic communities in Russia and Central Asia.
As a result of wars and ethnic cleansing, eastern and central Europeans experienced many forms of involuntary migration during the 20th century. These upheavals have rightfully focused research on the human tragedies and costs of forced modernisation. There is, however, another side. As a part of broader post-war European developments, individuals experienced enhanced mobility, a specific form of consumerism and shared ideas of 'the good life' not fundamentally different form 'the West'. The tourist's experience is a case in point and CSWE members explore particular features in the eastern and western histories of tourism.
Identity, memory and culture in Wider Europe
The upheavals of the last two decades have fundamentally altered Europe?s political landscape. Many individuals have to reassert their multiple identities. Between their memories of a sometimes idealised socialist past and possible loss of distinctiveness in a wider Europe or globalising world, they are confronted with a host of new choices directly related to the question of identity. The complex and dynamic interplay of ethnicities, identities, and religions has given rise to a large body of scholarship on the region highlighting the centrality of identity and memory as key conceptual tools within the disciplines of anthropology, history, sociology and political science. Within specific contexts memory is perceptibly malleable and identity overwhelmingly contested.
The return of nationalism and its competing historical myths and narratives, juxtaposing ethno-cultural or confessional identities, was epitomised in the disintegration of Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. At the CSWE, members deconstruct national narratives and inquire into the mechanisms of their dissemination from a variety of exciting perspectives, focusing for example on the role pop music or visual culture. Other projects focus on the durability of religion or the emergence of new confessional movements, from European Russia through Central Asia up to Alaska. In the recent past violent demonstrations have broken out in the Estonian capital Tallinn and Russia when a Soviet war memorial was moved to a different location. In the Balkans identity contestation continues to be fuelled by unresolved issues of constitutional status, territorial sovereignty and nation building. In Russia and elsewhere religion has returned to supplement nationalism as an animating idea in the post-communist political space. Our research thus focuses on the nexus between identity and memory across wider Europe and the myriad ways they impact on political culture and social structure.
The ways in which identity and memory are working in this context are particularly important. The culture of the wider Europe is inscribed in writing, materialised in cities and homes, consumed in objects and worn on the body, it is viewed in media and film, and listened to in the streets and on the radio through multiple languages. We are interested in the diversity of these abstract, material, and mediated manifestations of identity. Anthropology and sociology in particular are involved in contemporary examinations of such cultures
Ireland’s new relationships with Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe
As a small state within the European Union but one nevertheless perceived to punch above its weight, Ireland is often described as a ‘success’ within the structures of the European integration project. Indeed many of Europe’s smaller, post-communist states view Ireland as an exemplar and its developmental path as one to be embraced and emulated. Because of this Ireland is forging important new relationships at the level of both state and society with a wide range of actors and institutions in Central, Eastern and South-eastern Europe. The CSWE is at the forefront of efforts to analyse and explain the significance of these new relationships and what they can contribute to public policy. Along with mapping new relationships in the worlds of diplomacy and geopolitics in the wider Europe our researchers are actively engaged in work which seeks to gauge the impact on Ireland of relatively new phenomena such as inward migration. Yet contrasting the 'self' with the 'other' has always been an important tool for the re-affirmation of identities in history. Therefore CSWE members trace cross-cultural encounters between Ireland and a wider Europe back to the 18th and 19th centuries, for example in travelogues and private individual cross-border correspondence.
The large influx of immigration into Ireland is a new experience for a society that historically sent more migrants than it received; social and cultural research on how this phenomenon is experienced by incoming migrants and resident Irish alike is crucial for helping Ireland to adapt to these new circumstances. CSWE members carry out this research both in Ireland as well as in countries of Central, Eastern, and South-eastern Europe
As well as enhancing and strengthening the body of knowledge in this area the Centre will act as a critical interface with policy-makers in providing wide-ranging and analytical examination of the important challenges posed to Irish public policy provoked by new patterns of accelerated movement, labour mobility and foreign direct investment.
RECENT RESEARCH PRODUCED BY CSWE MEMBERS
‘Der Musterknabe Wamkt’, Die Welt,8 June 2008,http://debatte.welt.de/kommentare/75731/der+musterknabe+wankt
‘Ireland Votes, Europe Waits’, The Guardian, 6 June 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/jun/06/ireland.eu?gusrc=rss&feed=worldnews
‘Kosovo: the Hour of Europe’, Open Democracy, 14 January 2008,
nbsp;http://www.opendemocracy.net/article/conflicts/kosovo_hour_of_europe
‘Alte Kräfte drängen Serbien in die Isolation’, Die Welt, 18 January 2008,
http://debatte.welt.de/kommentare/56442/alte+kraefte+draengen+serbien+in+die+isolation
‘La Opción de Serbia’, La Prensa (Panama), 17 January 2008,
http://www.prensa.com/hoy/perspectiva/1237349.html
Departments
The Centre for the Study of Wider Europe is contributed to by a number of Academic departments from N.U.I. Maynooth. The principal contributing departments are:Degree Courses
A number of degree courses related to the study of wider Europe are available at NUI Maynooth, including:
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