Call for Papers: ‘New Perspectives in European Studies: Europeanisation in the EU and the Neighbourhood’

UACES CRN Centrifugal Europe - Annual Research Symposium 2015, Queen’s University Belfast, 6-8 March 2015

The European Union (EU) has faced increasing difficulties in recent years relating to the processes of political, economic and societal integration. Despite the change promoted during accession negotiations, EU candidate and neighbourhood countries have challenged the linear understanding of Europeanisation in a variety of areas across the continent. In recent years, research of Europeanisation has emphasised diffusion mechanisms and differentiated integration to explain variation in outcome rather than the lack of precision in and the direction of travel of European norms. Indeed, candidate and neighbourhood countries have remarkable leeway in deciding which aspects of European norms to adopt, and how to implement them. This raises questions about the role of the EU in policy convergence in candidate countries and the ENP and about the norms the EU endorses in practice. Yet, the Europeanisation phenomenon has effectively travelled to the neighbourhood of the EU and in the absence of membership prospects for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries, such a development is puzzling.

The ongoing European crisis has created new challenges and brought tensions (old and new) to the surface at both state and sub-state level, leading to debates about the relationship between the national and the supra-national, and the limits of sovereignty within the EU in its current form. Such developments represent an unprecedented reversal of the centripetal forces that characterised European integration in the decades prior to the current crisis, and ask serious questions about the future of the EU and its integration project. Against the background, our conference explores the Europeanization in the EU proper, enlargement and ENP countries (incl. Turkey, Western Balkans and previous accession countries). We welcome contributions which ask whether the integration of European norms in the wider European context is going ahead despite crisis or has it been put on back burner?

The event is hosted as a part of the UACES sponsored CRN Centrifugal Europe annual symposium and will provide postgraduates the opportunity to develop contacts and offers a valuable opportunity for participants to engage with leading academics concerned with the future of European integration project. We particularly welcome postgraduate students to apply and have set funds aside to support accommodation for postgraduate students from outside Northern Ireland attending. Please let us know – insert the note at the end of your proposal – that you would like to avail of such support.

Please submit your paper proposal of max. 250 words and details (name, institutional affiliation, contact details) online at http://jotformeu.com/form/43252541852351. by midday (UK time) on December 15 2014. In case of any queries please contact both organisers: Ada Regelmann a.regelmann@qub.ac.uk and Timofey Agarin t.agarin@qub.ac.uk.