News | Announcement | EUROPEAN UNION CENTRE in TAIWAN

Call for Papers/Panels/Workshops

10th Biennial Conference of the European Community Studies Association-Canada
Montreal, 8-10 May 2014

EUROPE AND PEACE

In 2012, the European Union was awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace. This decision provoked strong reactions, from the Wall Street Journal praising it as “inspired” to British politicians calling it “preposterous and absurd.” Much was made of EU leaders’ initial inability to decide who would represent the organization for the award ceremony in Oslo. Commentators also derided the fact that the recognition that the European Union “for over six decades contributed to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights in Europe” seemed to come at particularly inappropriate time, as the EU faced the worst economic and institutional crisis since its creation, perhaps forcing Greece to exit, while the UK threatened to do so.

Taking up the Nobel Committee’s challenge, the 10th Biennial Conference of European Communities Studies Association – Canada (ECSA-C) will evaluate, measure and explain the EU’s actual contribution to the advancement of peace and reconciliation, democracy and human rights. We wish to address both the EU’s impact on the domestic politics of its member states, including citizenship, economic, cultural, democratic empowerment, freedom of movement, learning, and active citizenship, and the EU’s impact on its periphery and the world, including enlargement, foreign, security and trade policy. We will explore the role of EU institutions, but also member state governments, political, cultural and economic forces, and integration dynamics. Our objective is to provide a balanced assessment and analytical understanding of the EU’s specific contributions (or lack thereof) to peace broadly understood. Paper on any topic related to the EU will also be welcome. Particular attention will be paid to the implications and lessons learnt of the European experience for other countries and regions, especially Québec, Canada and North America.

The organization committee invites researchers and practitioners from all over the world who study Europe from an economic, historical, legal, political or sociological perspective to join us in Montréal. The two-and-a-half-day conference will include a plenary session, a professional development day for graduate students, panels, and workshops. We thus welcome submissions for individual papers, panels with 3-4 paper presentations, and workshops with a dozen paper presentations.

The deadline for submissions is 1 December 2013. Submissions, to be sent electronically to ecsa-c@umontreal.ca, can be written in English or in French. About 30 travel grants will be made available to graduate and postdoctoral students who are presenting a paper. Please indicate in your submission if you are requesting such a grant.