An interdisciplinary research project employing methodological pluralism is being launched across ten European countries under Cluster 2 – Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society – of the Horizon Europe framework. The initiative involves the participation of Corvinus University of Budapest, alongside prestigious institutions such as Lund University (Sweden), Antonio de Nebrija University (Spain), the National University of Political Studies and Public Administration (SNSPA, Romania), the Center for Social Sciences (Georgia), the Centro de Estudos Sociais (Portugal), the Leibniz Institute for East and Southeast European Studies (Germany), the University of Bologna (Italy), and the Institute of Philosophy and Sociology of the Polish Academy of Sciences. The project is supported by Hungary’s Ministry of Culture and Innovation. 

The Hungarian implementation of the project has been awarded HUF 100,234,819 in funding under decision number 2020-2.1.1-ED-2024-00334 from the Government Co-Funding Scheme of the National Research, Development and Innovation Fund. Thanks to this support, Corvinus University is participating as an associated partner in the international consortium, which consists of nine core member institutions. 

The project officially kicked off with a professional launch event held on April 7–8. This marked the beginning of a three-year interdisciplinary research collaboration, supported by the Horizon Europe Programme (Cluster 2.2 – Culture, Creativity and Inclusive Society) with a total budget of €2,737,955 for the international partners. The research project aims to analyze the democracies of the European Union and the Eastern Partnership countries from historical, political science, and sociological perspectives, focusing on citizens’ political participation. The countries involved in the study include Spain, Ukraine, Portugal, Georgia, Poland, Moldova, Romania, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. 

The interdisciplinary project builds on methodological pluralism and integrates various research approaches, including desktop research and legal analysis, biographical narrative interviews and focus groups, quantitative and qualitative content analysis, critical discourse analysis and visual analysis, as well as network analysis to map actor–discourse coalitions, and Q methodology. The project aligns with the EU’s research and innovation agenda on inclusive societies by focusing on (non-)conventional forms of civic participation to improve representation across diverse cultural and democratic contexts. 

This initiative aims to produce scientific innovations and strengthen the deliberative aspects of democracy, with the intention of widely disseminating its findings. 

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Funded by the European Union. Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.