Cultural Opposition: Understanding the Cultural Heritage of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries

The consortium of 12 partners lead by the Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences has received funding from the Horizon2020 Framework Programme of the European Union to implement the project COURAGE (Cultural Opposition: Understanding the Cultural Heritage of Dissent in the Former Socialist Countries).

The three-year project COURAGE will be launched on 1 February, 2016. It aims at presenting the online and offline, private and public collections handling the heritage of the cultural opposition in the former socialist countries in Europe. A primary objective of the international consortium is to strengthen the position of these collections in the cultural scene, and to make the heritage of the East-European opposition an essential part of contemporary European culture. The comprehensive study covers 16 countries from the German Democratic Republic through the Baltic states to Ukraine. The effective social utilisation of the collections will be enhanced by organising seminars, film festivals, exhibitions, an online database, and developing a curriculum in each country involved.

Twelve outstanding universities or research institutes of ten countries will contribute to the research both from Eastern and Western Europe, with approximately 150 researchers. The total budget of the project is nearly 2.5 million euros for 36 months.

Project leader for the Institute of Sociology, CSS HAS: Éva Kovács. Participants: Bernadett Csurgó and Judit Gárdos.

List of participating institutions:

Research Centre for the Humanities, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA BTK)
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Polish Academy of Sciences (IFIS PAN)
Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland
The Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (IOS) Regensburg, Germany
Institute of Sociology, Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
Lithuanian Institute of History (LII), Vilnius
Charles University in Prague, (CUNI) Czech Republic
University of Bucharest (UB) Romania
Croatian Institute of History (HIP), Zagreb
Comenius University in Bratislava, Slovakia
The University of Oxford (UOXF) United Kingdom
Institute for Computer Science and Control, Hungarian Academy of Sciences (MTA SZTAKI)