Doctoral Program

The PhD program on Southeastern Europe was established in 2013 and ever since it has brought together an interdisciplinary group of PhD students, post-doctoral researchers, and senior scholars working on Southeastern Europe from an interdisciplinary perspective, promoting a critical and comparative area studies approach. The program reflects the university-wide focus on SEE and substantial research expertise in the field. Currently the program includes 14 PhD projects. Besides excellence and interdisciplinarity, internationalization is a central feature of the program, which encourages the international exchange of ideas and of PhD researchers. A core theme of the program is its teaching activities, guest lectures, research articles publishing, and PhD research projects oriented toward exploration of Europeanization processes in SEE. The program, known as the Europeanization Processes in Southeastern Europe Consortium or ESOE, has become a component of the university-wide Field of Excellence Dimensions of Europeanization and was accepted as full member in the competitive Doctoral Academy of the University of Graz in 2019. The Consortium has very strict organizational and academic regulations regarding administrative questions as well as academic knowledge production criteria.