Europe has become a permanent notion or idea in the public conception. There is no doubt that Europe today plays a much bigger part in the everyday life of the Danish people than was the case just a generation ago. This also means that Europe has become a legitimate and necessary object of research and academic study, and that Danish society needs objective and scholarly qualified information and documentation not emanating from specific political quarters or coloured by particular political attitudes.

Many universities around the world today offer programmes in ”European Studies”. The thing that is common to most of them is an interdisciplinary approach to the object ’Europe’. But it also goes without saying that different institutions stress different aspects of this object: some regard Europe rather narrowly as the European Union; others have a broader view on Europe as not just a continent, but also a complex geographic, historical and cultural unit, which as an object of study contains political, economical, legal and more specifically cultural dimensions.

The core activity of the centre is the comprehensive research project ”European integration and diversity – cultural, political and legal aspects”. The project is a joint enterprise, which through investigations of historical, cultural, political, legal, religious and ethical aspects of European cooperation seeks an overall holistic understanding of the European specificity from a point of view that combines humanistic and social sciences. Eight members of the section of European Studies are involved in the project: Michael Herslund, Kathrine Ravn Jørgensen, Irene Baron, Viktor Smith, Ramona Samson, Erik Lonning, Klavs Odgaard Christensen and Franck Pondevie. Furthermore, the centre also constitutes a frame for the individual projects of its collaborators covering the field from history to legal linguistics. The working papers collected in "Studying Europe - At studere Europa" (Copenhagen Working Papers in LSP 8-2003) yield a first impression of these projects. The common as well as the individual projects are conducted within networks together with national and international partners such as, for instance, Aalborg University, Malmö University, Royal Holloway University of London, European University Institute of Florence and Université Robert Schuman, Strasbourg.

One of the central tasks of the centre is to communicate information and knowledge about Europe. This is done by means of a website and a newsletter, through participation in the public debate and the arrangement of public seminars, as well as in printed publications. The centre arranges internal meetings and presentations at the Faculty of Languages, Communication and Cultural Studies and international events on European topics (symposia, workshops, conferences etc.) often in cooperation with network partners. Apart from this, the centre arranges national and international courses and summer schools for postgraduate and doctoral students. The first summer school, ”Europe and the European Union – a Scenario for the Future”, was held in cooperation with Malmö University under the auspices of the Øresund University in August 2004. The next, “Changing Europe – a united or divided union”, was scheduled for July-August 2005 (see: www.summeruniversity.org ).