Visions of Europe

Where is Europe heading? What new visions are emerging in responses to the changes and pressures of the twenty-first century? And how are these emerging – through new political forces, new points of polarisation, from traditional elites or by way of civil society agitation and mobilisation from below?

The LSE Visions of Europe project is a two-year programme of research and engagement into the points of polarisation and transformation in this new, changing Europe. Based the LSE Conflict and Civil Society research unit, the programme sits alongside the Europe for the Many events series and is funded by the Open Society Initiative for Europe. It collaborates on workshops, research and policy engagement initiatives with the Europe’s Futures programme based at the Institut für die Wissenschaften vom Menschen (IWM, Institute for Human Sciences) in Vienna.

Programme leads

Professor Mary Kaldor is the Director of the Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit in the LSE Department of International Development. Professor Kaldor is highly regarded for her innovative work on democratisation, conflict, and globalisation. She has also undertaken extensive civil society efforts on developing new visions for Europe from below. She was a founding member of European Nuclear Disarmament (END), a founder and Co-Chair of the Helsinki Citizen’s Assembly and, in recent years, has worked extensively with Another Europe Is Possible and European Alternatives on Brexit and EU reform related issues.

Dr Iavor Rangelov is Assistant Professorial Research Fellow at the Civil Society and Human Security Research Unit in the Department of International Development, London School of Economics and Political Science. He is Chairman of the Executive Board of the Humanitarian Law Center in Belgrade and Co-Chair of the London Transitional Justice Network.

Shalini Randeria is the Rector of the Institute for Human Sciences (IWM) in Vienna, Professor of Social Anthropology and Sociology at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies (IHEID) in Geneva, as well as the Director of the Albert Hirschman Centre on Democracy at the IHEID. She holds the Excellence Chair at the University of Bremen, where she leads a research group on Soft Authoritarianism and is a Distinguished Fellow at the Munk School of Global Affairs and Public Policy at the University of Toronto.

Researchers

Dr Luke Cooper (@lukecooper100) is a Visiting Fellow on the Europe’s Futures programme at the IWM (2018 – 2019), an Associate Researcher at the LSE CCS, and a senior lecturer at Anglia Ruskin University. He is a co-founder of the Another Europe Is Possible campaign and co-host of the Another Europe podcast, and is currently researching a book putting the crisis of the European Union in historical perspective.

Dr Roch Dunin-Wąsowicz (@RochDW) is a Research Officer in European Studies, Civil Society and Social Movements at the LSE Conflict and Civil Society Research Unit, and a Teaching Fellow in Sociology at the Department of Social Science, UCL Institute of Education. He is also Managing Editor of the LSE Brexit blog.

Niccolò Milanese (@NiccoloMilanese) is director of European Alternatives and co-author of Citizens of Nowhere: How Europe can be saved from itself (Zed Books, 2018). He is a researcher at CESPRA, EHESS, Paris and a Marie Curie fellow in 2018–2020.

Partners