Name and Surname
Marta Szpala
Affiliation
Institute of Political Studies of the Polish Academy of Sciences,
Graduate School for Social Research
Contact email
marta.szpala@gssr.edu.pl
Short Biography
PhD candidate at the Graduate School for Social Research of the Polish Academy of Science. Political analyst, lecturer, journalist and commentator specializing in the Western Balkans and EU’s neighborhood and enlargement policies. Recently, her focus has been mainly directed on grassroots activism and the protests movements in the Balkan region.
She holds an MA in International Relations and studied Slavic Studies at Warsaw University. Senior Fellow in the Centre for Eastern Studies in Warsaw. Participated in various international research projects devoted to EU’s policy in the Western Balkans as Research Assistant, Researcher and Project Coordinator. Guest lectures at the University of Warsaw, College of Europe in Natolin.
Authored publications about Balkans include: Bosnia’s Chaos. Causes of the political crisis in Bosnia and Herzegovina today (co-author), Editor of Paradoxes of stabilisation: Bosnia and Herzegovina from the perspective of Central Europe. Recent publications include: Making EU enlargement work in the (post) Covid-19 world (co-author), Stiftung Genshagen and Bromance. Turkey’s activity in the Western Balkans, OSW Commentary 2022. In the framework of Kosovo Research and Analysis Fellowship (KRAF), she conducted field research and published the report Cold in Coming. Living in Energy Poverty in a time of crisis. Reflection from Kosovo in a book Confronting Multiple Crises: Local and International Perspectives on Policy-Making in Kosovo which is edited by I. Armakolas et al.
Research abstract
My research goes beyond the mainstream approach to (de-)Europeanization in the case of the Western Balkans, which often implies a top-down approach as I would like to focus on the agency of local actors, as well as on their strategic usage of Europeanization for domestic purposes. To do so I would like to dissect narrative production on the EU and usage of these narratives by political and social actors in Serbia. Empirically, the study will be based on longitudinal and qualitative analysis of strategic texts produced by the main political actors and civil society organization to understand how the EU is interpreted and framed by domestic actors in the enlargement context since Serbia got the EU candidate status in 2012. This will be supplemented by semi-structured Interviews conducted with senior party officials and relevant stakeholders from NGO sector, especially from grassroots environmental protest movements to trace if and how the use reference to the EU in their struggles. I hope that my research contributes to a better understanding of the relations between the EU and the region and the process of (de)-Europeanization of these countries.