Project Description
In recent decades the cultural underpinnings of the European integration process have attracted more in-depth attention, as scholars have unpacked the European Community’s efforts to stimulate the process of cultural Europeanisation. Anastasia Remes’ research builds on the literature underlining the importance of political symbolism in the consolidation of the Community. She argues that international exhibitions, traditionally understood as diplomatic theatres for the display of symbolic nationhood, fulfilled a similar function for the European Community. Her Ph.D. thesis, entitled Europe at the Expo: The Pavilions of the European Community in Universal Expositions, offers the first comprehensive study of an important platform for the discursive legitimation of the Community: the European pavilions in Universal Expositions in Brussels in 1958, Montreal in 1967, Seville in 1992 and Shanghai in 2010. By focusing on the discursive legitimation strategies in the Community’s Expo participation, her thesis sheds new light on the history of European cultural policy and public diplomacy. During her Simone Veil Fellowship, Anastasia Remes will write an academic journal article based on the research carried out during her Ph.D.
Personal Bio
Anastasia Remes is a cultural historian and curator based in Berlin, Germany. She completed her Ph.D. in history at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy in 2022. She studied History (M.A. Ghent University, Belgium) and Curatorial Studies (M.A. Städelschule / Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany). Her research interests broadly include the history of European integration, visual and material history, as well as the history of museums and exhibitions.
In her Ph.D. thesis, she studied the cultural politics of the European Community, by examining the European pavilions created for Universal Expositions from the 1950s until today. As an external collaborator of the Historical Archives of the European Union, Anastasia Remes is currently developing a virtual reality exhibition, which brings the European Coal and Steel Community at Expo 58 in Brussels back to life. It will be exhibited in 2023 at the Jean Monnet House in France and at the House of European History in Belgium.
Recent publications by Anastasia Remes include “‘A Multifaceted Diamond’ out of Steel: Exhibiting the European Communities at Expo 67” in the Annual Bulletin of the Bureau International des Expositions, 2019 and Anastasia Remes, “Exhibiting European Integration at Expo 58: The European Coal and Steel Community Pavilion,” in World Fairs and the Global Moulding of National Identities: International Exhibitions as Cultural Platforms, 1851–1958, ed. Joep Leerssen and Eric Storm (Brill, 2021), 375–403.