We invite you to read the contributions from journalists, researchers, writers who are, as we, investigating and questioning European Narratives and their making in the present and the future.

Authors (pictured above from left to right): Umayya Abu-Hanna, Abdelkader Benali, Jan Brokken, Odile Chenal, Magnólia Costa, Hongjian Cui, Jason Dittmer, Lillian Fellmann, Amitav Ghosh, Marc Hannemann, Yudhishthir Raj Isar, Rajendra K. Jain, Renée Jones-Bos, Wolfram Kaiser, Gazmend Kapllani, Svetla Kazalarska, Karine Lisbonne-de Vergeron, Wietske Maas, Nat Muller, Silvia Nanclares, Thijs van Nimwegen, Fokke Obbema, Rainer Ohliger, Didier Pasamonik, Cristina Pecequilo, Kerstin Poehls, Ranabir Samaddar, Monica Sassatelli, Paul Scheffer, Jian Shi, Bas Snelders, Iryna Videnava and Niña Weijers.

The Reading Room contributions:

Featured

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Danube Foundation

Article & Essays

This report presents the reflections and findings of a group of young professionals and students – the Danube Foundation – who have been in search for shared stories of Europe. Their projectUtopia: European Vistas has been supported by ECF.

Article & Essays

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Niña Weijers

Article & Essays

Als er een Europa aan de horizon verschijnt, welk en wiens Europa is dit? In het voorjaar van 2011 nodigden ECF en Academisch-cultureel centrum SPUI25 een tiental schrijvers en denkers uit Europa en daarbuiten uit om hierover te praten.

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Iryna Videnava

Article & Essays

Protesting is considered a very European thing to do. … But European strikes are almost always about money. … But meanwhile in a little known corner of Europe there is a less mercenary struggle taking place – one that is closer to the spirit of Tahrir Square than Syntagma Square.

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Bas Snelders

Article & Essays

Read two reports from Bas Snelders: Not the Art of the State but a State of the Art, and a research report tracing new narratives for Europe emerging in the ECF 2008 grants applications.

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Jian Shi

Article & Essays

A Constructive View with Erasmus Mundus as a Consideration

Article & Essays

Article & Essays, Video

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Paul Scheffer

Article & Essays, Video

In this essay, Paul Scheffer discusses the waning of the European powers at the expense of new economies like Brazil, India, and China, and raises the question how Europe manages to deal with this change. He argues the perception of Europe in the new economies will acquire ever greater significance for European societies. This, according to Scheffer, presents an invitation to write history in a new way.

Article & Essays, Video

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Monica Sassatelli

Article & Essays

Has Europe lost the plot? Europe’s search for a new narrative imagination

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Ranabir Samaddar

Article & Essays

Comments by an Indian on the poser “Dwarfing of Europe?...”

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Kerstin Poehls

Article & Essays

More and more museums all over Europe have been discovering migration as a topic for temporary exhibitions. In this essay (PDF), Kerstin Poehls discusses how and why this movement of people is being showcased in one of the most immobile but nonetheless influential cultural institutions Europe has produced. She also shows that exhibitions on migration tell several stories at once.

Article & Essays

Article & Essays, Video

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Cristina Pecequilo

Article & Essays, Video

Problems such as unemployment, low salaries, loss of economic competitiveness, social tensions let to the definition of this period as the one of a new depression, part of a broader structural change in the world ́s balance of power. These trends were representative of change in Western societies, that seemed to reach the limits of their development and dynamism, which was being expressed by popular protests and the loss of international projection.

Article & Essays, Video

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Rainer Ohliger

Article & Essays

What role do immigrants play in the construction of historical narratives within a uniting Europe? Can the cultural diversity spurred by immigration be included in new European narratives of diversity? What would such broadened historical pictures look like? In this essay (PDF), Rainer Ohliger provides some answers to these questions, which lay behind the project Migrants Moving History: European Narratives of Diversity.

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Fokke Obbema

Article & Essays

What can we learn from China?

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Thijs van Nimwegen

Article & Essays

"We need a recurring character”, someone said. “Like a protagonist”, someone else added. “A recognizable face to be seen in each comic”, a third clarified… In this column, Thijs van Nimwegen gives a lively description of the birth of the comic Osvald and its main protagonist: “He was made by dozens of artists, and his appearance, character, and personal traits are shifting even as we speak. Osvald may therefore represent a whole new generation of the inquisitive antihero – a fluid character, showing different traits, depending on the reader.”

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Silvia Nanclares

Article & Essays

Each story develops its own code. And that code is only revealed while the story is being told. It’s not something you can do a priori. So, let’s get started...

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Wietske Maas

Article & Essays

"Europe itself never was and never will be a sealed-off ethnic unity but rather a deeply entrenched story of mass migration. We are all entangled within a history of genetic exchange that exceeds the boundaries of any region, nation or even continent."

Article & Essays

Article & Essays, Video

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Karine Lisbonne-de Vergeron

Article & Essays, Video

Karine Lisbonne speaks at the Dwarfing of Europe event in Amsterdam

Article & Essays, Video

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Svetla Kazalarska

Article & Essays

"Notwithstanding the long asserted crisis of the legitimacy of metanarratives, the “battle” of the narratives for Europe is still being fought on all fronts."

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Wolfram Kaiser

Article & Essays

Collecting European narratives is not an innocent cultural practice. Rather, it is a highly politicized normative practice to bolster a particular “European” position in the European “battlefield of memory".

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Renée Jones-Bos

Article & Essays

Renée Jones-Bos took up her position as Secretary-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs on 1 July 2012. From 2008 to 2012 she was Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands to the United States of America.

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Rajendra K. Jain

Article & Essays

Professor Rajendra K. Jain speaks at the Dwarfing of Europe event in Amsterdam.

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Gazmend Kapllani

Article & Essays

‘If you write about the incident, be sure to emphasise that you were robbed in Cologne, not in Brussels,’ she tells me…. – The entire mentality of the modern-day European Union is summed up in that one piece of ‘advice’.

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Marc Hannemann

Article & Essays

"Both proponents and critics of a united Europe continue to employ clichés, trapping themselves in their respective trenches. It’s time to imagine Europe in new ways, to broaden the debate, and to come up with an original story. ECF’s four-day eventImagining Europe was a small but ambitious attempt in this direction."

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Amitav Ghosh

Article & Essays

World-renowned Indian author Amitav Ghosh – who provided the thought-provoking keynote speech for ECF’s Imagining Europe event in October 2012– has written a stimulating essay.

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Lillian Fellmann

Article & Essays

"Europe needs each other in fresh ways, if not as friends then as visionary accomplices to redefine its unity in and with the world. Change is here, and we need to have the courage to call it what it is: a chance, and not a crisis."

Article & Essays

Article & Essays, Comics

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room

Article & Essays, Comics

What do comics have to do with the European project? In these essays, Jason Dittmer argues that graphic narrative is the ideal narrative for a Europe that seeks to emphasize its own outward-facing nature.

Article & Essays, Comics

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Hongjian Cui

Article & Essays

An essay on Europe's changing image in China.

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Magnólia Costa

Article & Essays

"In 1966, Brazilian artist Hélio Oiticica wrote: “Museum is the world.” This phrase could be part of the definition of “universal museum,” a place where cultural assets produced in every area of the planet are preserved, studied and exhibited, in a wide temporal arch."

Article & Essays

Video, Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Raj Isar

Video, Article & Essays

Raj Isar speaks at the Dwarfing of Europe event in Amsterdam

Video, Article & Essays

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Odile Chenal

Article & Essays

Stop complaining,’ said one man in his forties. ‘Create your new utopia. You will never succeed if you think the future in the same terms and models as the past. You have huge challenges? But also new instruments. Use the crisis for change. It is not their, it is your future!'"

Article & Essays

Narratives for Europe: Reading Room - Jan Brokken

Article & Essays

"We discover what is truly ground-breaking only later on. The brightest comets pass us by. During all those evenings we spend sitting in theatres or concert halls we miss the essence."

Article & Essays

Explore the Narratives for Europe archive: