Cultures in Southeast Europe within the Context of European
Unification

Roles, Identities, and Hybrids: Multiple Institutional Cultures in
Southeast Europe within the Context of European Unification
Location: Bulgaria
Fellowship Deadline: 2003-09-10
Date Submitted: 2003-08-26

Announcement ID: 134428

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 2003-2004 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 2003-2004 year.

Please, see the project summary enclosed below.

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 indi
vidual case).

The selected fellows will receive a stipend of 400 Euro per month and
an additional allowance of 1000 Euro for research trips. 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 techni
cal 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 w
ritten English, a certificate of which is highly recommended.
Knowledge of one or more of the SEE languages is a serious advantage.

Deadline for applications: September 10th, 2003

Eligibility
Scholars with doctoral degree or in the final stage of fulfilling
the requirements for such a degree, in the social sciences or the
humanities;
Excellent knowledge of English (oral and written), certificate of
English language proficiency is highly recommended;
* Junior researchers and university professors not older than 40
years of age.

The application-package (to be submitted by e-mail or post) should
include:
Research proposal: 1500 - 2000 words. (Please note, that the
research proposal should be in accordance with the Research Project
Format, enclosed below):
Copies of university diplomas and degree certificates;
CV and list of publications;
Two recommendation letters from distinguished scholars;
* Declaration that the applicant does not get support from other
scholarships

Selection procedure
The applications will be submitted to an International Selection
Committee composed of prominent scholars in the social sciences and
humanities. The final results will be announced on October 1st, 2003
at the web page below.

Selection criteria:
relevance of the project proposal to the frame of the collective
project
innovative insights
interdisciplinarity
comparative approach
important publications on the topic
previous participation in research teamwork

Information about the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia and the project
"Roles, Identities, and Hybrids" can be obtained at our website.

For more information, please contact Mila Popova (below).

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 conside
red 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 Europea
n integration. The project will contribute to our knowledge about the
compatibility of the various institution
al 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 a
nd 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 contex
t 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 a
re 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 th
e 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 b
y analogy various hypotheses about countries and regions beyond
Southeastern Europe).

For a more detailed description of the project, please see our
website.

EXEMPLARY COMMON FORMAT FOR THE INDIVIDUAL RESEARCH PROPOSALS IN THE
FRAMEWORK OF THE "ROLES, IDENTITIES AND HYBRIDS" PROJECT

PROJECT ABSTRACT
(150 - 250 words)
PROJECT OBJECTIVES
(15 - 50 words)
MAIN METHODS AND RESARCH TECHNIQUES
(50 - 100 words)
Disciplinary and scholarly contexts, debates, contemporary trends
and development of the discipline(s)
Reflection over the most important concepts and categories
Methods
Techniques
Possible interdisciplinary connections
SOURCES AND RESEARCH FIELD
(50 - 100 words)
Research field, limits and openings
Comparative perspective
Research focus - facts and phenomena to be investigated, case
studies
PROJECT HYPOTHESIS (what the project IS about)
(400 - 600 words)
HOW DOES THE PROJECT FIT INTO THE FRAMEWORK OF "ROLES, IDENTITIES
AND HYBRIDS"
(50 - 100 words)
LINKS TO OTHER INDIVIDUAL PROJECTS (developed in the framework of
the collective project
(15 - 100 words)
ACADEMIC/RESEARCH PARTNERS FROM OTHER COUNTRIES (IF ANY) ENABLING
COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE
(15 - 50 words)
SOCIAL AND POLITICAL CONTEXT - What social needs and expectations
does the project address; where, under what circumstances
(50-100 words)
TIMETABLE, RESEARCH TRIPS
(15 - 50 words)
* EXPECTED RESULTS
(15 - 50 words)

Contact information:
Mila Popova
Project Coordinator
Centre for Advanced Study Foundation
4 Alexander Battenberg Str.
Sofia 1000, Bulgaria

Phone: (+359 2) 980 37 04
tel./fax: (+ 359 2) 980 36 62
Email: milapopova@cas.bg

Fellowship website:
http://www.cas.bg