The Center for European Studies (CES) represents a platform for cooperation and the production of scientific knowledge on issues related to Europe in a multidisciplinary perspective. The research activities of the CES have the aim of contributing in an original and scientifically founded way to the advancement of European Studies, with particular reference to the sociological, political, historical and legal spheres. Main research lines are:
- The European foundations: The interdisciplinary study on the construction processes of a European society;
- Europeanization: the influence exercised by EU policies on domestic policies, at national and local level;
- Research methodologies in European Studies: The creation and implementation of innovative methodological tools in the study of the EU and European society in general.
The Center for European Studies promotes scientific collaborations aimed at developing knowledge on specific research objectives, through the formation of interdisciplinary research groups and openness to local authorities.
Main research activities
1. Europe, the Europeans and Covid-19 (2020, current research)
Online survey on the social consequences of the Covid-19 emergency and on the attitudes of Italians towards Europe and other European countries (Project Manager: Massimo Pendenza).
2. Cosmopolitanism and Europe among young people in times of crisis (2019, current research)
Research on changes in cosmopolitan attitudes and in the perception of Europe / European Union among young people (Project Manager: Massimo Pendenza).
3. European Union as a global actor/European Union, global player (2019, current research)
The project deals with the role assumed by the European Union at global level in the last thirty years and, specifically, with the discrepancy between its being a widely recognized and imitated geoeconomic power and, at the same time, a geopolitical power in itinere. The reasons for this anomaly are to be found within it: the nation states are not yet able to proceed towards the creation of the United States of Europe, while European citizens are looking more and more closely at European policies on climate, health, defence, migration as a unitary European process (Project managers: Beatrice Benocci, Dario Verderame).
4. Europe, young people and memory (years 2019/2020)
Beyond disciplinary perspectives, ‘transnationalization of memory’ means, for scholars, that the national past is no longer the sole site for the articulation of collective identities and that new conflicts concerning memory cross and shape the mutual construction of the local, national and global in the contemporary world. The research project focuses on the processes leading to the formation of a European memory among young people, that is, how they become (or do not become) bearers of a cosmopolitan memory culture in ordinary life contexts (Project Managers: Beatrice Benocci and Dario Verderame).
5. Festivals and Europe (years 2014/2018)
Research, starting from a case study (Florence European Festival), on the role of cultural performances in building a European identity (Project Manager: Dario Verderame).
