EU FUNDING OPPORTUNITIES AND PROJECT MANAGEMENT TIPS

Topic:The cultural heritage of war in contemporary Europe

Specific challenge: European nations and societies have had ambiguous relation to war since the beginning of the age of modern nation states. Wars were the culmination of patriotic efforts and cemented national identities. The horrors of wars pushed the same societies, nations and their elites to overcome traditional rivalries and to engage in the European construction that finally succeeded after World War II. The Nobel Peace Price received by the European Union in 2012 and the upcoming Europe-wide memorial events related to the first centenary of the outbreak of World War I and to the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II put in relief in an expressive way the many layers of the cultural heritage of war, whether for local communities, for national or for European identities.

Scope: The multidisciplinary, geographically balanced and comparative research will aim at exploring the complex relationship that contemporary European societies have with the tangible and intangible cultural heritage of the major armed conflicts fought on their soil in the 20th century (inter alia World War I and World War II but also Balkan wars, civil wars, revolutions, etc.).

The research will map the use of the cultural heritage of the selected major armed conflicts in memorial practices, media and popular culture, political appropriation, education, heritage preservation and related cultural heritage tourism. It will explore and conceptualise the role that this cultural heritage plays in local and national identities and in the practices and narratives laying the foundation of European identities. It will explore links between national cultural heritage traditions and assess how these can be better articulated, taking the impact of war on cultural memory into account.