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CENTRE FOR ADVANCED STUDY SOFIA
The Centre for Advanced Study Sofia (CAS) is an independent non-profit institution set up for the promotion of advanced scholarship and academic cooperation in the Humanities and Social Sciences. Learn more >
Current Programmes
Advanced Academia Platform
2009-2024
This platform, which brings together CAS individual-fellowship programmes, grants possibilities for conducting independent social-science and humanities research in an international, multidisciplinary environment, without restrictions in the selected areas of study - an approach intended to stimulate excellent scholarship at the highest international level.
Independent Fellowship programme for Bulgarian Junior Scholars and Bulgarian Academic Diaspora
2019-2024
The programme is financed by the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science and provides support for young Bulgarian scientists and researchers from the Bulgarian diaspora. It envisages: a) 5 nine-month scholarships per year for young Bulgarian scholars (including one month in a foreign institution); b) 2 three-month scholarships per year for representatives of the Bulgarian academic diaspora working in foreign academic institutions.
Lost in Transition: Social Sciences, Scenarios of Transformation, and Cognitive Dissonances in East Central Europe after 1989
2019-2023
The project seeks to place the current anti-liberal and anti-democratic backlash in Eastern Europe, arguably manifesting the all-European socio-political and ideological crisis in its most acute form, into a comparative historical perspective. It raises fundamental questions concerning the intellectual contribution and responsibility of those local and international actors (scholars, experts, think-tanks, NGOs, public intellectuals, etc.) who devised roadmaps for the transition to liberal democracy and market economy, and the interplay of these roadmaps and the realities “on the ground”.
The Construction of Knowledge in Archaeology and Art History in Southeastern Europe
2019-2023
With this Programme, we aim to investigate the ways historical knowledge is constructed through the disciplines of archaeology and art history in Southeastern Europe (Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bulgaria, Croatia, Greece, Cyprus, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Romania, Serbia, Slovenia and the Turkish province of East Thrace). Based on the observation that the culture-historical way of thinking about past cultures remains dominant in our region, we envisage to understand why this is so; at the same time, we wish to encourage the construction and deployment of a new theoretical and methodological framework that will enable us to look at the cultural past(s) of our region in multi-modal and cross-disciplinary ways.
PREVEX project (Preventing Violent Extremism in the Balkans and the MENA: Strengthening Resilience in Enabling Environments)
2020-2023
The overarching objective of PREVEX is to put forward more fine-tuned and effective approaches to preventing violent extremism. Focusing on the broader MENA region and the Balkans, context-sensitive, in-depth case studies of the occurrence and non-occurrence of violent extremism will be carried out and then brought together in a regional comparison.
Pforzheimer Fellowship Programme
2019-2022
The programme, supported by a donation of the American philanthropist and bibliophile Carl H. Pforzheimer III, provides for three 5-month scholarships per year to outstanding Bulgarian researchers and university professors.
Gerda Henkel Fellowships
2016-2022
Gerda-Henkel Fellowships (2016-2020) are aimed at scholars in the field of the Humanities and Social Sciences that come from the former Soviet space and Turkey. There are no thematic restrictions as regards the proposed project topics.
Landis and Gyr Artistic Fellowships
2017-2020
The programme is aimed at stimulating and promoting the creative work of artists from various fields – writers, musicians, painters, sculptors, actors, film directors, architects, etc. by integrating them in a community of human and social scholars and spurring interaction between theoretical research and the arts.
Current Fellows
In 2019/2020 CAS hosts 25 research fellows from 11 countries in the framework of Advanced Academia programme and the Gerda Henkel Fellowships. Another group of 6 scholars have been involved in the How to Teach Europe in the XXI Century programme and 1 researcher in a new fellowship project, targeting artists from various disciplinary backgrounds.
Recent Publications
A History of Modern Political Thought in East Central Europe. Volume I: Negotiating Modernity in the 'Long Nineteenth Century'
Editors: Balázs Trencsényi, Maciej Janowski, Monika Baar, Maria Falina and Michal KopecekRecent Publications » Books
News & Events
Fellow Seminar
Prof. Robert Appelbaum will present online via Zoom his research proposal on the topic: "The Renaissance Discovery of Violence, from Boccaccio to Shakespeare" on 2 April 2020 (Thursday) at 16:30h.Fellow Seminar
Prof. Margaret Dimitrova will present online via Zoom his research proposal on the topic: "The Athonite Monk Panteleimon (ca. before 1785 – after 1850): An Excellent Bulgarian Preacher" on 9 April 2020 (Thursday) at 16:30h.Fellow Seminar
Dr. Stoyan Shivarov will present online via Zoom his research proposal on the topic: "Lost Pages: (Ottoman) Turkish Language Periodicals in Bulgaria (1878 – 1944). Muslim Tradition versus Nationalism" on 16 April 2020 (Thursday) at 16:30h.Fellow Seminar
Dr. Nilay Kilinç will present online via Zoom her research proposal on the topic: "Highly-Skilled Turkish Migrants’ Search for ‘Alternative Diaspora Spaces’ in Europe: How Do They Build Social and Career Networks Beyond the ‘Cultures of Rejection’?".Fellow Seminar
Dr. Alessandro Nannini will present online via Zoom his research proposal on the topic: "Aesthetics as “medicina mentis”? A Reconsideration of the Origins of Aesthetics as a Philosophical Science" on 30 April 2020 (Thursday) at 16:30h.Fellow Seminar
Assoc. Prof. Dr. Irina Gordeeva will present online via Zoom her research proposal on the topic: "Tolstoyans and International Pacifist Movement in the 1920-1930s: The Early History of European Transnational Solidarity" on 14 May 2020, at 16:30h.Call for Applications: CHALLENGES FACING THE FUTURE OF SSH
Pilot phase project of the Centre for Advanced Study Sofia, 2019-2022, supported by the Centre for Culture and Governance in Europe, University of St. GallenFellow Seminar
Dr. Svetoslava Toncheva will present online via Zoom her research proposal on the topic: "Living with or versus Nature? - Mitigation of Human-Bear Conflicts as a Bridge towards "Politics of Conviviality"" on 21 May 2020, at 16:30h.Swiss Government EXCELLENCE Scholarships
for Bulgarian Scholars and Artists for the Academic Year 2021/2022