Prof Gerard Delanty

Much of my current research concerns issues around the European heritage. I am currently completing  a book, The European Heritage: a critical interpretation contracted by Routledge. Since the publication of my previous book, Formations of European Modernity: a Historical and Political Sociology of Europe in 2013 I have been preoccupied with a question that I addressed in my first book, Inventing Europe in 1995, namely: how should the European past be evaluated today? Over the past three years I have sought to clarify a number of perspectives on this question. The present book is the outcome of those reflections and offers both an analysis and evaluation of the European heritage and what it might mean for the present time. In light of the current mood of crisis if not despair about what Europe stands for, I hope the book will make a contribution to an idea of Europe that most people can identify with. The book is comprised of eleven chapters, seven of which are revised versions of papers published between 2014 and 2017.

On other activities that have a European dimension, I gave an invited lecture at the British Academy on 4^th November entitled “The European Heritage and Cultures in Conflict” and Keynote Lecture for the Conference ‘Puzzling Europe’, University of Gronnigen, 27 October, 2016. I am a Co-PI of a Horizon 2020 project on European cultural heritage and which is now in its final year. Another related activity was collaboration with the European House of History, a museum devoted to European history and due to open in May 2017 in Brussels. I have contributed to the shaping of the first temporary exhibition on cultural encounters with a chapter for the catalogue, ‘What happens when one culture meets another? Cultural encounters and European civilisation’ Interactions. Centuries of Commerce, Combat and Creation, Temporary Exhibition Catalogue, Brussels: House of European History/European Parliament.

I have also been writing various papers and blog on Brexit. My blog site is https://gerarddelanty.wordpress.com/ In these blogs I have drawn attention to the false claims made by the government that the outcome of the referendum must be implemented. I have also published two book chapters ‘A Divided Nation in a Divided Europe:Emerging Cleavages and the Crisis of European Integration’ in Brexit: Sociological Responses, edited by William Outhwaite. London: Anthem Press and ‘Europe in the World: From a Regional Integration to a Global Power’ in Outhwaite, W. and Turner, S. (eds) Handbook of Political Sociology. London: Sage. I have recently completed a forthcoming paper on populism, ‘The New Mainstream: Brexit and the Spectre of Authoritarian Democracy’. Other nonEuropean related work has included editing a special issue of the European Journal of Social Theory to mark its 20^th anniversary. The issue is entitled, ‘The New Mainstream: Brexit and the Spectre of Authoritarian Democracy’. 

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