The Department of Public Policy (DPP), Central European University (CEU), is pleased to announce that it has been awarded a three-year HORIZON Europe WIDERA grant „Building Capacities for Excellent Research and Innovation in Democracy and Policy through Networking, Knowledge and Experience Transfer“ (BRRIDGE) in a consortium with Matej Bel University (UMB, Slovakia), European University Institute (EUI, Italy), and University of Galway (UG, Ireland).
The transdiciplinary CEU team, led by DPP professor Martin Kahanec, will collaborate with the consortium partners on building and strengthening research excellence in the domain of democracy and policy as well as helping to advance the research management and administration capacity of UMB, while generating knowledge that contributes to the quality of democracy in the region and beyond. The project focuses on four specific objectives: strategic networking, building capacities, strengthening excellence in research, and fostering democracy through community and policy engagement. Specifically, BRRIDGE will lead to higher engagement of a broad group of various stakeholders in research processes through DPP’s John Shattuck Center for Human Rights and the creation of the Democracy Living Lab in the Banská Bystrica Self-Governing Region.
The kick-off meeting took place on October 17, 2022, at CEU in Vienna. Agnes Batory, CEU Pro-Rector for Research and Faculty praised the BRRIDGE project and highlighted its importance in the context of the challenges to democracy in the CEE region. CEU Rector Emeritus John Shattuck provided a keynote address at the meeting in which he highlighted the lessons that Central Europe can offer for solving the crisis of democracy.
„I am very excited about the BRRIDGE project, as it will contribute to CEU’s mission of enabling building open and democratic societies that respect human rights and human dignity through advanced research and teaching and socially and morally responsible intellectual inquiry,” remarked Martin Kahanec.
(Project ID: 101079219)