University of Copenhagen

The Ucopniversity of Copenhagen is the largest institution of research and education in Denmark with about 37,000 students and 7,000 employees. The TransSOL project is hosted in the Department for Media, Cognition and Communication in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Copenhagen. The department comprises four sections: Education, Film and Media Studies, Philosophy and Rhetoric, each of which conducts research and offers study programmes at all academic levels. A common characteristic of the four sections is the investigation into the basic conditions for human cognition and communication as they find expression in different institutions and media during changing historical and societal circumstances. Members of the TransSOL team at the University of Copenhagen are further associated with CEMES, the Centre for Modern European Studies in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Copenhagen. Aiming to overcome the tendency towards disciplinary fragmentation within the humanities as well as between the humanities and the social sciences, the centre offers a focal point for the establishment of national and international networks, thereby enhancing the competitiveness of humanities researchers in the context of both national and international research. Last but not least, the Copenhagen team is contributing to EuroChallenge, which is a major research project that addresses the place of Europe in the context of a rapidly and radically changing global order. It originates from EURECO, the existing interdisciplinary initiative between the Faculty of Humanities, the Faculty of Law and the Faculty of Social Sciences for European research at the University of Copenhagen. The project is funded by the UCPH 2016 funds and runs from 2013-2017.

We invite you to have a look at the Danish TransSOL website.

Team members

 TrenzHans-Jörg Trenz is the principal investigator of the Danish team. He is Professor in Modern European Studies in the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication in the Faculty of Humanities of the University of Copenhagen and Adjunct Professor at ARENA, the Centre of European Studies of the University of Oslo. He is also Deputy Director of CEMES, Centre for Modern European Studies at the University of Copenhagen and coordinates WP3 of the EuroChallenge project. Hans-Jörg obtained his habilitation from the Humboldt University in Berlin (2004) and his PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence (1998, with the dissertation on mobilising collective identities: public discourse on immigration in Germany and Portugal). He studied sociology, criminology, romance languages and literature at the University of Saarland, Germany, University of Bari, Italy and Central University of Barcelona, Spain and obtained his degree in 1993. His research focusses on the European public sphere, European civil society, citizenship and democracy and transnational mobilisation and protest. He has authored and edited seven books and published more than 60 articles. The large part of his publications deals with aspects of media and political communication in Europe, applying a public sphere perspective to the process of European integration and analysing both print and new media. His writings also address questions of language, ethnicity, collective identity, civil society and democracy.

For up-to-date info, please visit his staff page.

DeDenizniz Neriman Duru is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Department of Media, Cognition and Communication within the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Copenhagen. She holds a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Sussex and a degree in Social Anthropology from SOAS/University of London. Deniz is an affiliate of two interdisciplinary centres at the University of Copenhagen, AMIS (Centre for Advanced Migration Studies) and CEMES (Centre for Modern European Studies), and a member of EastBordNet/COST, an international network working on the social, moral and material relocations of Europe’s Eastern Peripheries. Her research expertise includes cultural pluralism, migration, conviviality, transnationalism, anthropology of Europe and Turkey and media anthropology. Deniz has worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the interdisciplinary EUCROSS project ‘The Europeanisation of Everyday Life: Cross-Border practices and Transnational Identities among the EU and Third Country Nationals’, financed by the EC’s 7th framework. The consortium is formed of 6 institutes in 6 countries (Denmark, Germany, the UK, Romania, Spain and Italy).

For up-to-date info, please visit her staff page.

Verena K. Brändle is a post-doctoral research fellow in the Danish team of TransSOL. She holds a PhD from the University of Copenhagen (December 2017) and was previously a PhD fellow in the EuroChallenge project funded by the UCPH Excellence Programme for Interdisciplinary Research (2014-2017). Verena is further involved in a project on the implications of Brexit for EU Citizenship. In 2012 she obtained a joint M.A. degree from the University of Bath, Humboldt University of Berlin and Sciences Po Paris. Her research focuses on people’s contestation of citizenship and migration in the EU and, related to this, how their notions of justice and solidarity find expression in online and offline spheres.