The CINEFOGO Network of Excellence will on a regular basis review other EU supported research networks and activities. Under the heading 'Taking stock of EU research activities' the Newsletter will give brief mentions of such work. In this issue we address the projects INTUNE and IConnectEU.

INTUNE "Integrated and United? A Quest for Citizenship in an Ever Closer Europe"

The major aim of the research to be done in INTUNE is to study the changes in the scope, nature and characteristics of citizenship as an effect of the processes of deepening and enlargement of the European Union. The project will focus on how integration and decentralization processes, at both the national and European level, are affecting three major dimensions of citizenship: identity, representation, and practice of good governance. These dimensions of citizenship are in the project analysed at four different levels: among elites, experts, mass media and citizens

 The INTUNE is an integrated project within the same theme as the CINEFOGO network of Excellence meaning that it includes both research activities and dissemination and training. The research process will be organised in three stages: (1) a conceptual and theoretical analysis, which is followed by (2) empirical research aimed at testing the main hypothesis and finally (3) dissemination activities.

 An important part of the INTUNE project is attitudinal analyses of the elites and the citizens clarifying the perception of European citizenship in these two groups of constituencies. The INTUNE project is at the moment focused on preparation of the first wave of attitudinal surveys of elites and citizens, which will take place in the beginning of year 2. In addition to this the project group is collecting documentary data from official documents and government reports concerning selected policy areas.

 The INTUNE project is based at Universita Degli Studi di Siena, Italy and chaired by Professor, Dr. Maurizio Cotta with Dr. Nicolò Conti as project manager. The INTUNE includes 32 institutions and research centres in Europe.

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Internet Connected EU research 'IConnectEU'

The CINEFOGO Network of Excellence is part of a new EU project financed under the Framework Programme Six (FP6) called 'IConnectEU'. This project is financed by the Specific Support Scheme (SSA) and includes 8 of the major projects supported by EU under the objectives of Priority 7 which is named 'Citizens and Governance in a Knowledge Based Society'. Included are both Integrated Projects and Network of Excellence. The projects included in this programme are among others CIVICACTIVE "Active Civic Participation" (University College Dublin), CONNEX "Efficient and democratic Governance in a multilevel Europe" (University of Mannheim), DEMOS "Democracy in Europe and mobilization of society" (European University Institute, Florence) and INTUNE "Integrated and United?" (University of Siena).

The aim of the 'IConnectEU' is to develop and test a model for integrated dissemination of outcomes from the above-mentioned EU projects. An important assumption behind the project is to increase the visibility and impact of research and scientific activities taking place in social science in Europe both within these projects and more broadly. All the projects cooperating in 'IConnectEU' are dealing with the broad topic of Citizenship and Governance in the EU.  

The first step in the project will be creation of a pilot portal, which will integrate the dissemination activities of the 8 projects. In a second step the portal will be used as a Best-Practice example for other research projects funded under the heading of the FP6. A demonstration workshop will bring together other interested projects and stakeholders to discuss the needs of a developed dissemination portal for social science in Europe and to check the adaptability of the portal.

 The dissemination portal will hopefully be able to serve as a basis for assessing the needs of other thematic priorities and research areas in future EU Framework Programmes and to transfer the results from one project to the others and to other applicants in the FP6 and future Framework programmes as an example of Best-Practice.

 The "IconnectEU" started the 1st of March 2006 and is based at the Social Science Information Centre (IZ), Bonn Germany with Dr. Maximilian Stempfhuber as coordinator. The CINEFOGO Network of Excellence is represented in the Steering Committee of the project by Thomas Boje.
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