A journal placing Europe in the world
By MANUELA ACHILLES and PETER DEBAERE | This year’s contest, with its official motto “United by Music,” takes place against a troubling geopolitical backdrop that is redefining Europe’s position in the world. This rapidly shifting context is characterized by the convergence of military conflict, economic realignment, and intensifying cultural contestation.
By MANUELA ACHILLES and PETER DEBAERE | Participation in Eurovision functions as a para-diplomatic practice expressing and constituting European belonging. It has functioned as a cultural register of political alignment, allowing countries to signal orientation toward Europe without formal institutional commitment.
By LUCA CIAN | Eurovision is not simply a song contest. It is one of the most ambitious experiments in brand-building anywhere in the world—one that simultaneously manages a global masterbrand, dozens of national sub-brands, and a fragile, emotional community called Europe.
By IVAN RAYKOFF | The European Song Contest invites audiences to recognize the strangeness of foreign cultures while discovering shared connection across difference. Its values of diversity and inclusivity are especially meaningful at a time when geopolitical conflict challenges Europe’s postwar order.
By CATHERINE BAKER | Eurovision has built a unique reputation as a space where queer and gender non-conforming musicians can be symbolically affirmed as representatives of their respective nations in front of an audience of more than 160 million viewers.
By ELLA JACKSON | Eurovision’s performances have increasingly combined standardized song structures with elaborate visual spectacle. While the contest partly reflects Anglo-American musical trends and global pop aesthetics, it also celebrates local and continental forms of Europeanness.
By ZVI GILBOA | Against the backdrop of recent controversies surrounding Israel’s participation in the Eurovision Song Contest, it is easy to overlook the extent to which Eurovision occupies a central place in Israeli cultural life.
By KEREM COŞAR | With Eurovision voting patterns unfolding according to the gravity relationship principle, an unkind context emerged for the songs Türkiye brought to the competition for most of the first two decades of its participation.
By KYRILL KUNAKHOVICH | The Intervision Song Contest was to be a showcase for a new and gentler form of rule: what Czechoslovak politicians would soon term “socialism with a human face.” The only reason it has ever existed is that its organizers were excluded from Eurovision.
By JOHN PICKLES | At the core of the desire for transformation is a fundamental demographic challenge, revolving around the kind of future young Bulgarians can hope for. The mobilization of social media and symbolic politics shaped the protest movement in ways that other parts of Europe and beyond may well need to pay attention to.
By JULIA KHREBTAN-HÖRHAGER | The present moment reveals how fragile Europe’s post-historical confidence proved to be. Questions of sovereignty, territorial revisionism, democratic resilience, and state violence have re-entered political life.
By SARAH WOLFF | Is the EU moving towards a model of migration governance increasingly shaped by deterrence, externalization, and geopolitical bargaining rather than fundamental rights protection?
By SUZANA VULJEVIC | On first read, the irreverence and iconoclasm of Petrović’s lyricism appealed to me. While the high register, antiquated language, and occasional play on words found in the original threw me, Petrović the man was familiar and recognizable to me as a figure who fit squarely within Robert Wohl’s delineation of the generation of 1914.
By VICTOR TAKI | The history of the late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century conflicts in and around Canada demonstrates certain deviations from the Western European military pattern emerging at the time.Small war, as practiced by the French and their Indigenous allies against English colonies in the 1690s, was strongly criticized by contemporary English military historians and later on by American and Anglo-Canadian historians.
By SAMUEL B. H. FAURE | Arms production in Europe is mainly carried out by private companies, due to the liberalization of all national armament policies there.
By GRIGORI KHISLAVSKI | In the run-up to and aftermath of the annexation of Crimea, Putin’s rhetoric started featuring theological imagery that ultimately found its way into the constitution via amendments.
By GAËLLE LE PAVIC | Contested borders constitute a particularly pronounced phenomenon in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus, where unresolved conflicts and wars after the collapse of the Soviet Union have generated enduring disputes over sovereignty and statehood.
By DAVID BERRIDGE | The books discussed here chart a shift from the individual photograph to a reckoning with the “cacophonous energy” of our historical and contemporary image worlds.
By JULIA KHREBTAN-HÖRHAGER | Throughout modern history, the indoctrination and militarization of young people have proven central to the consolidation of non-democratic regimes.
By METEHAN TEKINIRK | Europe’s pivotal moment is part of a broader process, a fundamental shift in world politics.
By BEE LEHMAN and TOM VAN NUENEN | Scholars must understand the scope of what exists in a digital environment to be conscious of inherent biases and interpretative limitations in their research.
By PETER DEBAERE and MANUELA ACHILLES | Trade policy can serve as a deliberate instrument of political power even when it runs counter to the economic interests of the country imposing it.
By ANDREW MARTINO | At what point does an author, especially one of tremendous renown, sacrifice a right to privacy?
By CRAIG WILLIS | Every European league contains clubs situated in areas with regional or minority language contexts.
