Ricerca Progetti di ricercaERC - HumanEuroMed

ERC - HumanEuroMed

This is a five-year ERC Funded Project to investigate the role played by Southern European countries in shaping the contemporary regime of international aid. It examines the humanitarian undertakings of Portugal, Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia, and Greece since the end of the Second World War to the end of the Cold War, looking at the experience of different actors – such as institutions, administrators, experts, non-governmental organisations – in a comparative and transnational perspective.

To capture and compare the specific humanitarian undertakings of the countries under investigation (Portugal, Spain, Italy, Yugoslavia and Greece), HumanEuroMed addresses three thematic axes:

1. The entanglements between international aid, decolonisation and the complex configuration of the post-colonial world.
2. Humanitarian diplomacy and the transnational networks that connected the countries of Mediterranean Europe among themselves and to the Global South.
3. The linkages between international relief and national welfare, with a focus on the intertwining of policies, practices and cultures of social care on a national level and those of international relief programmes.

Additionally, returning Mediterranean European countries to the spotlight furthers our analysis on three interconnected levels:

1. The intra-Mediterranean dimension and the role that humanitarianism has played in the relationships between the countries of Mediterranean Europe themselves.
2. The South-South dimension and the effects that international relief projects have had in shaping the relationships between the countries of southern Europe and the Global South.
3. The global dimension and how international relief has come into play for the positioning of the countries of southern Europe in the sphere of global relations.