Title of the Project: Contested EU Foreign Policy in an Era of Geopolitics (EUFOG)
Funding programme: Horizon Europe. Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions - Doctoral Networks
Grant Number: 101169280
Duration: 1 December 2024 – 30 November 2028

The DA invites applications for fully funded PhD positions as part of EUFOG, offering outstanding training opportunities in a dynamic research environment.

  • Full funding & no tuition fees: Successful candidates will receive full financial support, including tuition waivers.
  • International research exposure: The programme includes two secondments with leading international partners, providing valuable global experience. For more information, kindly see the PhD projects descriptions below.
  • Cutting-edge training: Candidates will benefit from top-tier academic and professional development opportunities.

Description
The doctoral network EUFOG will contribute to a better understanding of the ways in which the EU is reconsidering key tenets of its international role in the face of the geopolitical turn in international politics. The liberal international order, i.e. the collection of norms, institutions and power relationships that have defined the last decades of international political and economic relations, is undergoing major transformations. Although the final destination of these changes is still to be seen, the situation is shaped by a return of competition between great powers in a multipolar world (US, China, EU and Russia), facilitated further by growing geopolitical ambitions of many regional powers. These developments call for an overhaul of research about the international role of the EU. EUFOG will train a generation la scholars to enable them to address the politics (the political conflicts and debates), policies (decisions and measures) and partners (relationships and perceptions) associated with the ways in which EU foreign policy responds to these new international realities in a broad range of issue areas, from security to trade to human rights.

PhD project title Host Secondment 1
(Sep 2026 - Feb 2027)		 Secondment 2
(Sep 2027 - Feb 2028)
Project # 13 | The EU’s public diplomacy at time of crises and uncertainty. Cases on security and multilateralism.
(Application closed)		 DA (Austria) UCanterbury
(New Zealand)
(ACADEMIC)		 ICDS (Estonia)
(NON-ACADEMIC)
Project # 14 | The Western security alliance under stress. The place of the EU.
(Application closed)		 DA (Austria) IBEI (Spain)
(ACADEMIC)		 CSDS-BSoG-VUB
(Belgium)
(NONACADEMIC)
Project # 15 | Great Powers and Multilateral Cooperation at the UN: Perceptions, Priorities and Outcomes.
(Application closed)		 DA (Austria) IBEI (Spain)
(ACADEMIC)		 FGV (Brazil)
(NON-ACADEMIC)

 

PhD projects descriptions

The EU’s public diplomacy at time of crises and uncertainty. Cases on security and multilateralism

Changing perceptions of the EU by third countries pose a challenge for the EU’s public diplomacy. This project accounts for EU’s public diplomacy and its evolution over time, particularly as perceptions of the EU change in an age of geopolitics, by focusing on issue areas in the broader domains of security policies and multilateral institutions. It also establishes the extent to which EU public diplomacy is responsive to and influential on perceptions about the EU. In other words, it identifies key narratives driving EU public diplomacy and its capacity to engage with narratives on the ground.

The Western security alliance under stress. The place of the EU

The West (broadly understood) is changing. It is shifting focus towards the Pacific, and it is being re-articulated by way of a plethora of formal and informal clubs and patterns of cooperation. This project addressed the role of the EU in this changing landscape, particularly as regards its inclusion and exclusion in various of those clubs, as well as its changing relationship with them, including with NATO as well. It assesses the changing relative importance and role of such formal and informal patterns of cooperation, as well as the designs for them advanced by EU member states. It draws out the implications of such changes for the future of the EU as a security actor.

Great Powers and Multilateral Cooperation at the UN: Perceptions, Priorities and Outcomes

The project will explore the relations of the EU with great powers, i.e. the US, China, and Russia, in multilateral cooperation at the United Nations. The project will study the perceptions of great powers of key issues of international security and the way the way they position themselves on these issues in the context of the United Nations General Assembly. In a second step, the project will identify institutions and mechanisms used by great powers for the coordination and amplification of their positions at the UN and the resources they invest. The project will shed new light on EU and great power perception and cooperation patterns at the UN in times of geopolitical change and growing pressure on the traditional, liberal order.