DFG funds international research group "European Socialisation" with three million euros. The initial questions: What does European integration mean for society? How does it manifest itself in people's everyday lives?
The international research group "European Socialisation" at the University of Oldenburg, which the German Research Foundation (DFG) has approved for an initial period of three years, aims to get to the bottom of these questions. The funding amounts to three million euros.
"Within just a few months, Oldenburg's social sciences have once again succeeded in strengthening their international profile by attracting considerable funding," emphasises University President Prof. Dr Babette Simon.
"The approval of this extensive research project is a great recognition of the work of all colleagues involved," says Prof Dr Martin Heidenreich, initiator of the research network, and adds: "It is a huge incentive for us to devote even more attention to the topic of European integration."
European unification is not limited to the member states having to comply with directives from Brussels, says Nils Müller, Managing Director of the Jean Monnet Centre for Europeanisation and Transnational Regulations Oldenburg (CETRO), where the research group is based. In addition to economics and politics, it also influences daily administrative practice and the higher education system, as well as the way we interpret history and perceive social inequalities. This social dimension has so far been neglected in both research and public debate. "We hope that the project will provide us with new insights into which processes contribute to the fact that Europe continues to grow together despite all the political and economic conflicts in the current crisis," says Müller.
Renowned researchers from the universities of Bamberg, Berlin, Bremen, Erlangen, Leipzig, Linz and Siegen are investigating the organisation of trade unions, cross-border everyday practices and the emergence of a European interpretation of history in seven sub-projects. Can uniform processes of Europeanisation be identified here? What does the course of European integration look like within society? "Beyond these research questions, we want to raise awareness of how complex and socially significant European unification is in the 'Horizontal Europeanisation' project," says Prof. Dr Susanne Pernicka, who helped develop the research group as a junior professor at the University of Oldenburg and is now a professor at the University of Linz.