CFA- Roles-identities-hybrids

2005. Feb. 27., V, 11:42:05 CET

CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDY SOFIA

FELLOWSHIP PROGRAMME

ROLES, IDENTITIES AND HYBRIDS

Multiple Institutional Cultures in Southeast Europe within the Context of

European Unification

CALL FOR APPLICATIONS

Academic 2005-2006 Year

The Centre for Advanced Study Sofia (CAS) is announcing its call for applications for fellowships in the international research project ROLES, IDENTITIES AND HYBRIDS Multiple Institutional Cultures in Southeast Europe within the Context of European Unification for the academic 2005-2006 year. 

Please, see the project summary enclosed bellow.

Duration and financial conditions of the research

The annual enrolment includes eight researchers - four fellows from the humanities and four from the social sciences. The duration of each fellowship is 9 months. Non-Bulgarian fellows are also eligible - they will be residing permanently or on a part-time basis in Sofia (negotiable in each individual case) and shall participate in all workshops, seminars and public events of the ROLES, IDENTITIES AND HYBRIDS project that take part in CAS, Sofia. 

The selected fellows will receive a stipend of 400 Euro per month and an additional allowance of 1000 Euro for travel expenses required by the research work (including the travels to Sofia of Non-Bulgarian fellows). The Centre for Advanced Study Sofia is providing the academic, organizational and administrative support of the research. The fellows will be able to use all the technical facilities of the Centre. 

Working language and language skill requirements

The working language of the project is English. The applicants will work in an international research team, where all discussions, workshops and lectures are in English, as should be the final research paper to be submitted for publication. Therefore the applicants should be fluent in oral and written English, a certificate of which is highly recommended. Knowledge of one or more of the SEE languages is a serious advantage. 

Deadline for applications: 15 April 2005

Eligibility 

  a.. Scholars with doctoral degree (awarded up to 7 years ago) or in the final stage of fulfilling the requirements for such a degree, in the social sciences or the humanities;

  b.. Excellent knowledge of English (oral and written), certificate of English language proficiency is highly recommended;

The application-package (to be submitted by e-mail) should include:

  a.. Research proposal: 1500 - 2000 words (in accordance with the Research Project Format, enclosed below);

  b.. Copies of university diplomas and degree certificates (scanned/ faxed/ posted);

  c.. CV and list of publications;

  d.. Two recommendation letters from distinguished scholars (scanned/ faxed/ posted/ sent via e-mail by the one who recommends); 

  e.. Declaration that the applicant does not get support from other scholarships 

Selection procedure

The applications will be submitted to CAS international Academic Advisory Board composed of prominent scholars in the social sciences and humanities. The final results will be announced on 

1 June 2005 at the following web page: www.cas.bg

Selection criteria:

  a.. relevance of the project proposal to the frame of the collective project

  b.. innovative insights

  c.. interdisciplinarity

  d.. comparative approach

  a.. important publications on the topic

  b.. previous participation in research teamwork

Information about the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia and the project "Roles, Identities, and Hybrids" can be obtained at the following website: www.cas.bg

For more information, please contact:

Mila Popova

Project Coordinator
Centre for Advanced Study Foundation
70, Neofit Rilsky Str.
Sofia 1000, Bulgaria
tel.: ++359 2 9803704
fax: ++359 2 9803662
e-mail: milapopova at cas.bg, cas at cas.bg

SUMMARY OF THE PROJECT "ROLES, IDENTITIES AND HYBRIDS"

The goal of this collective research project is to explore the zone of intersection, interaction, and hybridization between institutional roles and collective identities. These intersections are of special importance for the countries in Southeastern Europe. "Identities" and "roles" are considered to be two different yet interrelated patterns of individual and group behavior, operating simultaneously. The analysis of the various and specific types of their "hybridization" will shed light on the difficult implementation of democratic institutions in Southeastern Europe - a region where the import/adoption of institutional models co-exists and interacts with centuries-old identities, new identity-formations, and identity-challenging processes. The elucidation of the differences and the diversity in this process is relevant for the current social and political agenda of European integration. The project will contribute to our knowledge about the compatibility of the various institutional cultures in Europe and will facilitate their openness for practical negotiations during the unification process.

The main hypothesis of the project is that it is possible to explore the intersections of roles and identities in the institutional cultures in SEE by means of interdisciplinary analysis focused on the dialectical link between cultural images of institutions and institutional practices. Images and practices are considered "bridges" and "zones of interaction" between roles and identities. Cultural images are preconditions for perceiving, adopting, and performing institutional roles in practical contexts; at the same time, they link roles to group and individual identities. In the context of institutional practices, social actors internalize, problematise, contextualise, and transform these images of institutions and institutional roles: this practical adoption and "intimization" is both a professional and a biographical act. These dialectics open two mirroring questions: How are the patterns of institutional behavior influenced and transformed by identity-formation processes, and how are identities and acts of identifications reshaped by role behavior in the context of institutions?

These questions will be addressed by 26 interrelated and interdisciplinary case studies focusing on Southeastern European countries in two main thematic research lines: 1. "Cultural images of institutions, professions, and conventional social roles" and 2. "Practicing institutional culture. Role behavior and identity-formation processes inside institutions".

In correspondence with the two research lines, we expect two main groups of methodological approaches: discourse analysis of texts and discursive products; and sociological and anthropological fieldwork on practices in institutional contexts.

The expected result of the research will be an innovative and detailed picture of the institutional culture of Southeastern European countries in the time of transition, explaining some region-specific cultural micro-mechanisms of adaptation to institutional behavior and some of the causes of the recurrent crisis of democratic institutions in this part of Europe. These results will provide impulses to the discussion on the compatibility of institutional cultures of Southeastern Europe with those of the other countries in the future European "commonwealth of commonwealths".

On the theoretical level, a detailed model of the interference between structures of group belonging and role competencies will be developed. This model will pave the way for further analogies and inferences - both in time (opening up the field for historical research) and in space (developing by analogy various hypotheses about countries and regions beyond Southeastern Europe).

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Dr. habil. PETO Andrea

Assistant Professor, Department of Gender Studies
Central European University, 
1051 Budapest Nador utca 9. Hungary
tel: 00 36-(06)- 209 292519
email: petoand at axelero.hu
http://www.nextwave.hu/peto
http://www.ceu.hu/gend/Peto/index.htm

Associate Professor, University of Miskolc,
Director, Equal Opportunity and Gender Studies Center
http://www.miskolcgender.hu
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