Organized by Professors Andrew C. Gould and Anthony M. Messina, the conference convenes American and European scholars to address an overarching question: What are the implications of the persistence of robust regional and nationalist identities and movements and the emergence of newer, religious and ethnic identities within the member states of the European Union for the project of “ever closer” European integration?
The papers delivered at the conference intersect three streams of scholarship: work on contemporary ethnonationalism (e.g. Basque separatism, Scottish nationalism); scholarship on illiberal nationalism, and particularly the illiberal ideas and policies advocated by right-wing political parties and groups (e.g. Austrian Freedom Party, French National Front, Slovak National Party); and research on the incorporation of Muslim populations within European societies. The conference will explore the challenges and opportunities for greater regional integration that are posed by these important alternative sources of self-understanding in Europe.
Scholars from the disciplines of history, political science, and sociology will be presenting their original, unpublished scholarship at the conference.

The Conference Speaker

Tariq Ramadan is a Professor in the Faculty of Theology at Oxford University, where he is also a Research Fellow at St. Antony’s College and affiliated with Oxford’s European Studies Centre and its Middle East Centre. He is also a Research Fellow at Doshisha University (Kyoto, Japan), and Visiting Professor at Erasmus University (Netherlands), where he holds the Citizenship and Identity chair. In addition, Professor Ramadan is currently the President of the European Muslim Network (EMN) based in Brussels.