The Center for Advanced Studies – Southeast Europe (CAS SEE) at the University of Rijeka is pleased to announce its annual Call for Fellowships for Spring/Summer 2021.
The CAS SEE Fellowship Program for Spring/Summer 2021 will host 7 Junior Fellows.
The Call for Applications closes on January 15th, 2021.
The 13th generation of fellows will assume their positions by March 15th 2021.
The CAS SEE Fellowship is intended to provide support for early-stage researchers. Inspired by the cooperation of previous generations of CAS SEE Fellows and their creation of long-term thematic synergies among researchers, the upcoming CAS SEE Fellowship will stimulate fellows to present their research in Rijeka and other regional centers. Alongside pursuing their independent research interests, fellows will attend regular CAS SEE regional conferences and seminars.
Fellows are expected to spend a total of four weeks (split into two 2-week residencies) during their fellowship on the island of Cres at the Moise Palace, a Renaissance palace managed by the University of Rijeka. The Moise Palace serves as a research retreat; a regional hub for the advancement of social science, humanities, art, and interdisciplinary research; and a space of engagement and exchange with local communities. As in previous years, Fellows will co-organize the program for their group’s retreats to Moise based on their individual and collective interests and needs.
Although CAS SEE will take into account excellent proposals that are not strictly related to the main topics, we encourage candidates to focus particularly on two thematic foci:
From Horizons of Freedom to Democratic Engagement
From the pioneering works of Jean-Jacques Rousseau to the recent works of David Graeber, researchers have long been engaged in the study of freedom, inequality, and emancipation. It is difficult to dispute the assertion that freedom is the central societal value of modernity. Despite freedom’s central role as the guiding principle of democratic and emancipatory politics, we seem to be far from any philosophical, political-theoretic and everyday consensus on the meaning of freedom. As we face the challenges of pandemics, climate change or ultimately of our self-destruction, there is a greater practical urgency of finding ways out of the impasse between the competing conceptions of freedom, and their relation to democratic engagement.
This thematic focus invites researchers to apply with projects which broadly investigate
- social tensions and institutional deadlocks related to competing conceptions of freedom and/or democratic engagement
- flaws and potentials in inherited theories of freedom and/or democratic engagement
- the development of democratic culture as well as democratic systems
- materialist, technological and social underpinnings of anti-democratic tendencies and/or radical emancipatory self-governance
- the design of new free institutions
Food Futures
The production, distribution, and consumption of food has become one of the key problems of the climate crisis, as these practices both contribute to and are endangered by new ecological unpredictability. As weather patterns unravel and the soil and seas fail to sustain biodiversity, food systems are becoming increasingly compromised while the logistics of globalized food systems appear unsustainable. Meat production is among the primary industries which contribute to exacerbating the root causes of the climate crisis. An inordinate amount of food waste coexists with starvation.
This thematic focus invites researchers to apply with projects broadly related to
- the anthropology of food
- the studies of changes of cultural and economic food habits and systems
- the political project of universal access to food