Dr. Karen Fricker (Royal Holloway, University of London) and Dr. Milija Gluhovic (University of Warwick) have received funding from the UK’s Arts & Humanities Research Council (AHRC) to convene an international, interdisciplinary research network titled “Eurovision Song Contest and the ‘New’ Europe,” which explores the ways in which the Contest has reflected, and perhaps driven, changing perceptions and realities of Europe since the fall of the Berlin Wall.

The project examines how the ESC has forged cultural interconnections that cut across political divisions between nations and shape the contours of a cosmopolitan European identity.

This project involves three theme-based workshops:

• ‘European Margins and Multiple Modernities’ (at Royal Holloway, University of London, February 2011)
• ‘Queering Europe’ (at the University of Warwick’s teaching facility in Venice, Italy, April 2011)
• ‘Feeling European: The Eurovision Song Contest and the European Public Sphere’ (at the Eurovision Song Contest in Düsseldorf, May 2011).

Details about each of these workshops will be available on the ERN website as well as the official website for the project (http://www2 NULL.warwick NULL.ac NULL.uk/fac/arts/theatre_s/research/eurovision/) in the coming weeks.

The project will result in an edited collection Performing the ‘New’ Europe: Identities, Feelings, and Politics in the Eurovision Song Contest (2012).