The Past is Present. Negotiating Notions of Europeanness in the European Union: Interperceptions of Racism and Xenophobia in Germany, Austria and Great Britain
Supervisors: Dr Sara Jones and Dr Isabelle Hertner
My PhD looks at the notion of ‘German Europeanness’, i.e. the image of Germany as an EU member state, that is still largely rooted in the past, and questions its stableness. It examines the dynamics behind the construction of notions of Europeanness by looking at the media discourses on racism and xenophobia in Germany, Austria and Great Britain in context with the NSU (National Socialist Underground) murder series 2000-2006 and the discovery of the NSU in 2011. The study aims to introduce the concept of Europeanness into the academic literature on European identity and, on this basis, to add to the understanding of Germany’s role in in the European Union by determining how much it is still ‘haunted by the ghosts of the past’, particularly the ‘brown shadows’ of national socialism.
Profile
Josefin has a BA in European Studies from the University of Passau, Germany, and graduated with an MA from the University of Hamburg and an MSc from the University of Edinburgh, both in European Studies, in 2012. She is the IGS/DAAD project scholarship holder and project assistant on the Institute’s new major research project “The German Past and the Contemporary World: The Domestic and Foreign Politics of Memory” (2013-2015) and is writing her PhD on German identity and right-wing extremism in Europe.
Qualifications
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BA European Studies, University of Passau
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MA European Studies, University of Hamburg
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MSc European Studies, University of Edinburgh
Research interests
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National and European Identities
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Right-wing extremism in Germany and the European Union
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Historical and Collective Memory
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EU Enlargement and Cultural Policy
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Discourse Theory and Political Communication
Conference Papers
Re-approaching European Identity: A Conceptual Framework for Analysing Europeanness, Young Scholars School “European Identity: Concepts - Evidence -Research Methods”, Friedrich-Schiller-University of Jena, 17th-23rd March 2013.
Contact:
Email: JXG290@bham.ac.uk