Workshop with Widening Europe Programme short-term mobility visitors

• Development and External Relations Service
• Widening Europe Programme

Join a peer-to-peer discussion with EUI researchers and Widening short-term mobility visitors!

The EUI Widening Europe Programme continues in 2026 to enhance research opportunities, promote knowledge exchange, and facilitate access to resources in the social sciences and humanities by offering one-week mobility stays at the European University Institute for doctoral researchers from the targeted Widening countries.

During this workshop, the visitors will present their work in person as part of a group session with other participants in the short-term mobility staying at the EUI during the same week. EUI peers who have been paired with the visitors will act as discussants and provide comments and feedback during these sessions.

About the visitors:

• Artúr Baranyai is a PhD researcher at the ELTE Centre for Social Sciences, Hungary. His doctoral research investigates how political ideologies structure climate politics in the European Union. Treating ideology as an analytical tool, the dissertation integrates its multiple conceptualizations (conceptual morphology, individual-level factor, elite policy stance), and develops a mixed-method design to examine how ideological configurations shape climate politics understood broadly: climate change public opinion, elite communication, and EU climate policy discourse.
• Monika Berdys is a PhD researcher at the University of Warsaw, Poland. Her thesis explores the emergence and dynamics of institutional collaboration surrounding the implementation of an algorithmic video surveillance system in a Polish city, utilizing the public policy process theories as a conceptual lens. Through qualitative case study method her research provides the empirical analysis of how cooperation unfolded among actors who are typically reluctant to work together, and how this led to engaging citizens in financing the CCTV system from the participatory budgeting. The findings highlight the role of the discursive context of smart city, securitization, and citizen engagement in the relative unanimity surrounding the expansion of monitoring.
• Richard Figura is a PhD researcher at Masaryk University, Czech Republic. His dissertation examines the efficacy of economic sanctions through the case of Russia’s sanction-proofing policies following the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. The project adopts a receiver-centred perspective grounded in international political economy, challenging conventional approaches that focus primarily on the sender's capacity to coerce. The study analyzes Russia's structural power, monetary autonomy, and domestic policy responses to both financial and trade sanctions. Utilising a theory-building single-case study design, the research integrates concepts of monetary autonomy, economic nationalism, and chartalism to identify the structural preconditions and manoeuvring space that enable resistance to external economic pressure. The objective of the present study is to develop a theoretical model that clarifies how sanction proofing strategies shape the overall efficacy of sanctions.
• Oksana Koshova is a PhD researcher at Lviv Polytechnic National University, Ukraine. Her PhD research focuses on return policy in post-conflict conditions as a topic within international relations. She studies how international norms, regional integration, and national interests interact in shaping return policies. In her dissertation, she analyses the experience of the Balkans, African countries, Israel, and Eastern European states in order to understand which models of repatriation, reintegration, and circular migration could be adapted for Ukraine. The Ukrainian case is unique. Future return will take place in a context of deep integration with the European Union and strong interdependence between Ukraine and EU Member States. For the EU, this is not only a humanitarian issue but also a question of stability, solidarity, and longterm migration governance. For Ukraine, it is directly connected to rebuilding human capital and strengthening state resilience after the war.

This initiative reflects the EUI’s commitment to broadening participation in European academic life and ensuring that talented scholars from underrepresented countries can access opportunities to pursue advanced research training.

Members of the EUI community interested in joining the discussion are welcome to register for this event.

The EUI Widening Europe Programme initiative, backed by contributions from the European Union and EUI Contracting States, is designed to strengthen internationalisation, competitiveness, and quality in research in widening countries, and thus foster a more cohesive European Higher Education and Research area.