About the initiative

Europe is nowadays united. The EU represents one of the essential common markets, with the liberty of circulations of goods, capital, services, and labour. It has as well numerous parts of shared historical references, values, traditions.

But within Europe, there are still significant divisions, regional and transversal. The regions, like Central Europe or Eastern Europe, had specific modernization processes and particular evolutions – due to geopolitics, late modern statehood, with its cultural and political implications. On the western fringe of Europe, France was a structuring power in Europe. Its influence overwhelmed borders through the language. The Scandinavian countries have their specificities, the Latin countries… Some transversal cultural elements can as well define the divisions. Europe is defined by a plurality of memory, plurality of political, cultural, and national identities. The aim of the 4EU+ program European Pluralities is to research, analyze, and organize research-based teaching programs to seize this internal plurality of the European cultures, politics, and society.

We launched pilot programs “Dimensions francophone,” “College for Central European Studies,” “Plurality of Memories.” We already started a new book series “Pluralité Européennes,” organized an international and interdisciplinary 4EU+ Winter School for around 50 participants (“Memory in Conflict”), built an original program of Ph.D. Seminars and course of studies through our research. We support the emergence of projects of German Studies, Post-Yougoslavian Studies, Eastern-European Studies, and more. We plan to create the first European Memory Studies program, as well as to create the most robust curriculum for a Central-European Studies program. We are developing the francophone networks by putting together the resources of the six partners and coordinate it on our webpage. Nevertheless, primordially these different projects are linked together, constituting a complex network, full of personal and thematic bridges. Because we believe that this kind of plurality is the wealth of our European societies.