EURoWEB-SPATIALITIES OF EUROPEANIZATION IN THE WESTERN BALKANS

The Western Balkans (WB) are considered the next target of the EU's enlargement. However, the process of the region's Europeanization remains largely unexplored. The EU-funded EURoWEB project will investigate how territory, place, scale and network (TPSN) interact to allow or impede Europeanization of the WB region. The project will introduce an innovative TPSN framework and test it from a gender perspective. Ultimately developing a new methodology, EURoWEB will focus on the exchange, transfer and changes of EU urban policies by interurban networks (IUNs) using qualitative and quantitative data regarding the participation of urban actors from Zagreb, Belgrade and Pristina in the selected IUNs.

The researcher will carry out a EURoWEB to examine how the Europeanization of the Western Balkans (WB) manifests at insufficiently researched socio-spatial levels. By introducing an innovative TPSN (Territory, Place, Scale, Network) framework to the Europeanization studies, testing it in a WB region with the "gender lens" and developing a new methodological tool, the project will explore the way the territory, place, scale, and network interact to enable or to inhibit the Europeanization of WB. Starting from the critical and the horizontal conception of Europeanization, the Europeanization of WB will be analysed by focusing on the exchange, transfer, and mutations of EU urban policies, through inter-urban networks (IUN). The researcher will collect qualitative and quantitative data about the participation of urban actors from Zagreb (Croatia), Belgrade (Serbia), Pristina (Kosovo) in the selected European IUN and conduct a social network analysis (SNA) and qualitative network analysis (QNA) to grasp not only the networks impact but also their interplay with other socio-spatial dimensions in which they are embedded. This will allow her to sketch the contours and explain the underlying, invisible and undertheorized, but potent spatialities that underpin the dynamic process of Europeanization of WB. The fellowship will provide a unique opportunity for filling the significant gaps between socio-spatial theorising and Europeanization studies. Capitalizing from the fruitful exchange between researcher expertise in urban sociology and host institution and supervisor's expertise in Southeastern European studies / Europeanization, the overall aim of the fellowship is to develop a new socio-spatial conception of Europeanization and a new method that can be used in the further Europeanization research, in and out the EU, as well as in the further empirical testing of the TPSN