Institute for Mediterranean Studies

MACAUTH

Screening Souls, Building Nations. Macedonia(s) as a Laboratory for Balkan-wide Authoritarianism

Principal Investigator: Dr. Tasos Kostopoulos
Funded by: European Research Council - Starting Grant 2022 (Grant Agreement 101077076)
Start date: 1 March 2023,   End date: 29 February 2028
Overall budget: € 1,467,800
Hosted by: Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Greece

The project “MACAUTH: Screening Souls, Building Nations. Macedonia(s) as a Laboratory for Balkan-wide Authoritarianism” aims to investigate a little-explored and usually neglected aspect of the Macedonian Question throughout the late nineteenth and most of the twentieth century: namely, the function of the Macedonian Question as a catalyst and a testing ground for the emergence, development and consolidation of authoritarian state policies on a nation-wide scale in all the Balkan nation-states involved. In other words, how the tools used by the rival nation states to extract national loyalty in late Ottoman Macedonia, where nation had been widely conceived first and foremost as a political party, were subsequently transformed into a far broader method of social and political control. MACAUTH will examine the transfer of particular administrative practices of surveillance, control and political indoctrination, as well as state-sponsored violence and its ideological justification in the name of national expediency, from the initial field of their application in Ottoman and post-Ottoman Macedonia to the mainstream political and social life of Greece, Bulgaria and Serbia/Yugoslavia, as well as to the respective diasporic communities. The impact of the same heritage in Romania, Albania, the Ottoman Empire and its successor nation state, the Turkish Republic, will also be assessed.

MACAUTH’S research team consists of Tasos Kostopoulos  (IMS-FORTH), as Principal Investigator, Tchavdar Marinov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria, and IMS-FORTH), Alexander Vezenkov (Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia, Bulgaria, and IMS-FORTH), Petar Todorov (Institute of National History, Skopje, North Macedonia), Dmitar Tasić (Institute for the Recent History of Serbia, Belgrade, Serbia and IMS-FORTH), Raul Carstocea (Maynooth University, Ireland), Yannis Papadopoulos  (IMS-FORTH), Lambros Baltsiotis (Panteion University, Athens, Greece), Elias Skoulidas (University of Ioannina, Greece), Nicos Sigalas (EHESS, Paris, France), two PhD students under the supervision of Lina Venturas (Panteion University, Athens, Greece) and Paraskevas Matalas (University of Crete, Rethymno, Greece), as well as two researchers that have yet to be recruited.

MACAUTH is hosted at the Institute for Mediterranean Studies of the Foundation of Research and Technology – Hellas (IMS/FORTH), situated in Rethymno, Greece, with the collaboration of the Institute of National History (Skopje, North Macedonia) and Maynooth University (Ireland), as Beneficiary Institutions.

Project Team

Tasos Kostopoulos

Tasos Kostopoulos

Postdoctoral researcher
Curriculum vitae
Raul Carstocea

Raul Carstocea

Assistant Lecturer
Maynooth University, Ireland
Curriculum vitae
Dmitar Tasić

Dmitar Tasić

Senior Researcher
Institute for the Recent History of Serbia, Belgrade
Curriculum vitae
Petar Todorov

Petar Todorov

Professor
Institute of National History, Skopje
Curriculum vitae
Alexander Vezenkov

Alexander Vezenkov

Postdoctoral Researcher
Institute of Balkan Studies, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia
Curriculum vitae
Tchavdar Marinov

Tchavdar Marinov

Senior Researcher
Institute of Philosophy and Sociology, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, Sofia
Curriculum vitae
Yannis Papadopoulos

Yannis Papadopoulos

Postdoctoral researcher
Curriculum vitae
Katerina Stathi

Katerina Stathi

Project Coordinator - Communication Assistant
Curriculum vitae
Ivana Hadjievska

Ivana Hadjievska

Postgraduate fellow
Curriculum vitae
Helen Vonorta

Helen Vonorta

Systems administrator, Computer engineer
Maria Ernest Fragopoulou

Maria Ernest Fragopoulou

Research Assistant - Projects Coordination & Management
ERC
Funded by the European Union (ERC, MACAUTH, grant agreement No. 101077076). Views and opinions expressed are however those of the author(s) only and do not necessarily reflect those of the European Union or the European Research Council Executive Agency. Neither the European Union nor the granting authority can be held responsible for them.