Rachel Carson - Simone Veil Fellowship for Stefan Couperus

Dr Stefan Couperus has been awarded the Rachel Carson - Simone Veil Fellowship for Spring/Summer 2021, awarded by the Project House Europe and the Rachel Carson Centre in Munich. The fellowship enables scholars to do research on the intersection of political and environmental history of modern Europe.

‘Grey’ Democracy for a Green Future?

Dr Couperus specializes in the political, social and urban history of modern and contemporary Europe. His Rachel Carson - Simone Veil fellowship project, ‘Grey’ Democracy for a Green Future? Untangling the Politics of Growth in Post-War Western Europe, centres on two related research topics. First, it engages with the historical entanglement of democratic institution-building and the imperative of industrial growth in post-war Western Europe. Second, it questions how and why the 'grey' democracy that facilitated the 'Great Acceleration' of the post-war decades, is perceived as a panacea for ‘ailing democracy’ in the age of climate change in Western Europe.

The Rachel Carson Center and Project House Europe

The Rachel Carson Center (RCC) fosters innovative research and education in the environmental humanities and social sciences. Project House Europe (PHE) promotes cutting-edge research from around the world on the history of Europe during the 20th and 21st centuries. As international and interdisciplinary research centers, they award one joint fellowship to a postdoctoral or senior scholar working across disciplines and striving to contribute to the public dialogue on contemporary European environmental history.