COST Action ENTER (CA17119) Call for Papers – Research Workshop

Communicating EU Foreign Policy: The Power of Political Dialogue?

12-14 March 2019, Darmstadt, Germany

Rationale and Aims:

The EU is facing new external realities. Key challenges for European societies – security, the migration crisis, environmental challenges such as climate change, a stable energy supply, or the stability of financial markets – require new strategies, instruments and policies for developing amicable and constructive solutions. However, while the EU is speaking with multiple voices, it has not yet embraced the merits arising from this feature. Furthermore, while the EU has been keen to be recognized as a benevolent super power, its external image seems contested. Therefore, both external perceptions of the EU, and the EU’s own political communication need to be examined more thoroughly. Our focus on political dialogue refers to one of the EU’s key instruments for expressing its identity as a normative and discursive power. Over the past decades, political dialogue has advanced as a flexible, multi-purpose tool to express the EU’s multiplicity of voices. We aim to explore the EU’s discursive powers and the ways in which political dialogue is mobilized to acquire consent and coin European narratives. Zooming in on “new realities”, we will, on the one hand, concentrate on specific topics such as EU-Africa relations and development; climate, migration, and on the other hand on the role of the EEAS as a communicative actor and dialogical power. Furthermore, we will explore external perceptions of the EU as an aspirant super power. We will focus on images, frames, perceptions and narratives projected by the EU – and understood by audiences inside the EU, in the European neighbourhood and around the world. In doing so, we invite particularly scholars who focus on European foreign policy and the EU’s role in the world.

Practical information:

Financial Support: Participants will be reimbursed for travel, subsistence and accommodation according to the Rules of the COST Association and within the framework of COST Action CA17119. Further information: https://www.cost.eu/wp-content/uploads/2018/08/COSTVademecum.pdf

How to apply:

Please submit your paper title and a 300-word abstract to info@foreignpolicynewrealities.eu

Submission deadline: 25 January 2019

Further questions:

For content-related queries, please contact the workshop organizers (Dr. Franziska Müller at fmueller@uni-kassel.de). For logistics, please contact the COST ENTER Network Manager (Dr. Jonas Schoenefeld, Technische Universität Darmstadt) at info@foreignpolicynewrealities.eu

Download the call information as a pdf file here.