The Regional Network of Centers for Advanced Studies in Southeast Europe (RECAS) – a collaborative platform connecting universities and scholars across the Western Balkans – invites early-career researchers to apply for the 2025 RECAS Fellowship. This unique program supports innovative, regionally grounded research that explores how youth shapes democratic, ecological, and digital futures.

Theme: Youth Agency and New Political Imaginaries in the Western Balkans

Deadline: 3 October 2025

 What is fellowship about?

This year’s fellowship focuses on how young people in the Western Balkans imagine and enact political alternatives in response to the region’s complex challenges, such as stalled EU integration, democratic backsliding, state capture, and dual deficits in ecological and digital capacities. Rather than treating youth as a future electorate or passive recipients of policy, the program positions them as active agents of political imagination and co-creators of knowledge.

Thematic focus areas

The project foregrounds two interlinked thematic pillars:

  • New Political Imaginaries of Youth
    How do young people across the region picture Europe’s and regional social and political future? What metaphors, historical references and cultural narratives do they deploy to articulate their relationship with democratic institutions, identity, and regional affiliation? Fellows are invited to research how these imaginaries inform youth’s sense of belonging, resistance, and possibility.
  • Eco-Digital Youth Futures
    How do young people engage with the intertwined challenges of ecological crisis and digital transformation? What role do digital tools play in their civic expression or environmental advocacy? What kinds of hybrid “eco-digital imaginaries” emerge from youth discourse and practice?

These themes challenge researchers to think beyond youth as recipients of policy or subjects of demographic concern. It invites them to trace how youth understand and contest the limits of existing political configurations, and how their ideas might inform more inclusive, participatory, and just futures for the region and Europe as a whole.

Fellowship at a glance

Duration: 4–6 months (starting December 2025)

Monthly stipend: €1,500

Location: Hosted in Belgrade or Rijeka; regional collaboration across WB capitals

Eligibility: PhD holders or advanced PhD candidates; fluent in English; social sciences, humanities, arts; focus on Southeast Europe

What fellows do:

  • Conduct research on youth political, ecological, and digital imaginaries;
  • Work directly with students in deliberative workshops across six WB capitals;
  • Join a five-day Surgery Week at Moise Palace on Cres Island;
  • Develop ideas and policy tools through an eco-digital Policy Hackathon;
  • Exchange knowledge at the CAS SEE Weekly Seminar Series.

Outputs: Research essay or policy brief; prototype or tool from the Hackathon; public presentations at regional & EU events

Funded by: Open Society Foundations – Western Balkans & ERSTE Foundation