Western Balkans
Welcome to the developing FEWD project area:
"Humanistic discourses, civil society and social movements in Romania and Bulgaria, with special focus on the so called Western Balkans 6 region"
Already in the 1980th several academic researcher and member of the civil society movement from the CEEC inspired the FEWD team member to focus on this region.
Hereby especially worth to mention is that the two main FEWD founding and research members Prof. Peter Kampits and Prof. Manfred Wuketits - a multilingual Austrian / Burgenland Croat - teached already in the 1980th humanistic philosophy at several CEEC universities.
Beside the different multi- and interdisciplinary academic research on CEEC, the FEWD received additional inspiration by the already 1952 founded Humanists International
So, this multi- and interdisciplinary FEWD Humanism project at University of Vienna established two main goals:
The first is to provide inspiration to people from different academic disciplines as they explore avenues for their own research.
The second is to encourage rational public discourse and dialogue about humanism, civil society and their social movements.
The FEWD starts after years of preparation now with the multidisciplinary project, titled "Humanistic discourses, civil society and social movements in Romania and Bulgaria, with special focus on the so called Western Balkans 6 region"
Especially motivating for our research and civil society activities is that there are already very relevant academic and civil society structures in this region, for example
Balkan Civil Society Development Network ( BCSDN )
Balkan Insight - this is a website of the Balkan Investigative Reporting Network (BIRN)
The German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina coordinates the Western Balkans Process - Joint Science Conference.
Regional Youth Cooperation Office - RYCO is an independently functioning institutional mechanism, founded by the Western Balkans 6 participants (WB 6)
In German, published by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung you find excellent information about Southeastern Europe.
And certainly check our list of journals especially relevant for research on this region.
Contact: fewd.philosophie@univie.ac.at
Annotation: This project honors especially the work of Prof. Manfred Wuketits. He was a specialist on philosophy of biology and ethics. And he supported since 2001 the main FEWD philosophy of liberal secular humanism in an evolutionary naturalistic tradition. Sadly Prof. Wuketits died on cancer in the age of just 63 in June 2018. And not to forget, he loved as Austrian / Burgenland Croats especially the Balkan region.