Projects

Competitive research projects

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Principal investigator: Boris Jokić, Ph.D.Project start: 01.04.2023.

Critical ChangeLab - Democracy meets arts: Critical change labs for building democratic cultures through creative and narrative practices

The Critical ChangeLab project aims to reinvigorate the relationship between youth and democracy, and consequently the future of 21st Century European democracy. This is achieved by spearheading the reach and impact of the Critical ChangeLab Model of Democratic Pedagogy, fostering youth's active democratic citizenship at a time where polarisation, deep political divisions and declining trust in democracy are spreading across Europe.

Project leader: Josip Šabić, Ph.D.Project start: 01.01.2024.

Educational and Career Plans of Youth in Music Education - MUSICPLAN

Educational and career plans of youth who attend music education are an underexplored area. There is a particular lack of research that would, in an attempt to detect possible determinants of these plans, bring together various theoretical perspectives, and that would include samples of youth of different age. This project will explore possible determinants of educational and career plans of youth who attend music education in Croatia. In the conceptualisation of the project, the starting points are the self-determination theory and the theory of cultural reproduction.

Project leader: Anđelina Svirčić Gotovac, Ph.D.Project start: 01.01.2024.

Effects of the Europeanization Process in Selected Urban-Rural Areas of Croatia – HREUURBRUR

Upon the EU accession, Croatia signed a number of strategic documents by which it became entitled to carry out the public policies that the EU promotes as the Europeanization process. As of 2021, Croatia has been divided into 4 NUTS2 regions: Pannonian Croatia, Adriatic Croatia, the City of Zagreb and Northern Croatia, in which the Europeanization process will be explored.

Principal investigator: Nikola Petrović, Ph.D.Project start: 24.02.2020.

Integration and disintegration of the European Union: Dynamics of Europeanism and Euroscepticism

The question of EU disintegration is becoming increasingly important and there is a growing number of research on the topic, both theoretical and empirical. In this project, the development and dynamics of Europeanism and Euroscepticism will be compared based on an interdisciplinary approach and by employing innovative comparative methodology and for this purpose seldom employed sociological theories. The ideas of Europeanism and Euroscepticism are crucial for understanding the processes of integration and disintegration in the times of intensive social polarization. As part of the project, we plan to conduct qualitative comparison of carriers of Europeanist and Eurosceptic ideas coming from political and intellectual elites in five Member States from different phases of the EU enlargement process (Germany, UK, Spain, Poland, and Croatia). Further on, we will carry out a quantitative comparison of the way in which historical trauma influenced the success of Eurosceptic parties in all EU Member States. The results should contribute to the comprehension of the influence that different historical experiences had on various visions of European integration in divided European societies. The comparison of political and intellectual actors engaged in building supranational identities and their adversaries, in socialist Yugoslavia and the EU, should provide a deeper understanding of integrational and disintegrational processes in supranational organizations. The research and dissemination activities of the project should contribute to the de-ideologization of European integration and European identity debates within the scientific and broader community.

Principal investigator: Lana Peternel, Ph.D.Project start: 01.10.2022.

Isolated People and Communities in Slovenia and Croatia – ISOLATION

The Covid-19 pandemic has brought several relevant issues to the forefront, including physical and social isolation, which is the focus of this project. We will use an anthropological approach to explain what it means to be isolated. Through ethnographic studies in isolated social spaces and abandoned areas, we will show how isolation shapes the experiences of insularity and emptiness in urban and rural areas among individuals and communities in Slovenia and Croatia. We will also explore how different modalities of isolation shape experiences, values, and attitudes toward the environment and the future.