The EU is currently going through a very hard moment: Euroscepticism is spreading and citizens feel distant from the European project. This is why this group aims to "open the doors" of the Institute and connect the EUI with civil society at large. As is well known, civil society and academia are usually considered distant worlds, which often do not speak the same language and with very few things to share. Nonetheless, we believe that our initiative would pursue the twofold objective of making civil society benefit from EUI researchers' skills and knowledge, and providing young engaged academics - from every department - with a “civil society perspective” on their research topics.
In practice, the purpose of this WG is thus to organize public debates, conferences and roundtables with citizens, local associations, schools and other institutions on the current challenges that the EU is facing (migration, social policy, gender equality issues, environmental and human rights protection, etc.).
For starting, we aim at working "locally", therefore to be a member of the WG a decent level of Italian would be required. However, this will not prevent our WG from going beyond Tuscany or Italy in the future.
The working group is thankful for the generous support of Prof. Federico Romero (History department).
