ProTest Project Launch: Researchers Gather in Budapest for the project kick-off meeting

Written By Chekhros Kilichova

Budapest, 8 April 2025 – The project “ProTest: Protest as a Democracy Test. Protest Culture under Transformation and as a Transformative Power” was officially launched with a two-day kick-off meeting held on 7–8 April 2025 at Corvinus University of Budapest. Funded by the Horizon Europe programme, ProTest brings together a multidisciplinary consortium of nine academic and research institutions from across Europe to examine the evolving role of protest in contemporary democratic societies.

The meeting marked the beginning of a three-year collaborative effort to explore protest not merely as a symptom of democratic crisis, but as a diagnostic tool and potential engine for democratic transformation. The ProTest project investigates the complex interplay between protest culture and democracy in a time of political polarisation, democratic backsliding, and societal fragmentation. Through an innovative, cross-national, and comparative approach, the project aims to deepen understanding of how protest practices are shaped by—and help to shape—public perceptions of democracy and civic engagement.

researchers in a room with desks, chairs, laptops, discussing.

The first day featured in-depth discussions on the project's initial work package (WP1) focused on mapping the state of the art in protest studies, co-led by the University of Bremen and Corvinus University. Presentations were made on the select countries in Europe with a focus on the historical and current political and socio-legal environments and changes in democracy levels. They analysed the actors, arguments as well as types and forms of protests and how they have been changing since the early 2000s. This initial research helps to set up a longer-term historical context in order to find how certain thematic repertoires, issues and their contention emerge as longer-term processes.

A public book launch of "Power and Protest in Central and Eastern Europe," took place as part of the project launch. Editor Claudiu Crăciun (SNSPA, Romania) introduced the volume, followed by chapter presentations from Lia Tsuladze (Georgia), Henry P. Rammelt (Romania), Piotr Kocyba (Poland), and Szabina Kerényi and Márton Gerő (Hungary). The evening concluded with a series of public lectures, featuring research on democratic norm violations and citizens’ evaluations of democracy (Zsófia Papp), the dynamics of de-democratization in Hungary (Réka Várnagy), and protest transformations in Georgia (Lia Tsuladze).

The second day was dedicated to the strategic planning of the project’s future activities. It opened with a session on Work Package 2, led by SNSPA and the University of Bologna, focusing on the project’s qualitative fieldwork methodology and the selection of protest case studies across participating countries.

Subsequent sessions outlined detailed plans for:

  • WP3: Protest Practices and Democratic Imagination (UANE, Spain and CSS, Georgia)

  • WP4: Digital Protest and Civic Discourse (CSS and Corvinus University)

  • WP5: Protest and the Public Sphere in Contexts of Crisis (CSS, SNSPA)

  • WP6: Data Integration and Comparative Analysis (University of Bremen, University of Bologna)

The afternoon included the presentation of a draft blueprint for WP7: Communication and Dissemination, led by Lund University and the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAN), outlining outreach, stakeholder engagement, and the project’s open-access strategy. The final session addressed project management, financial coordination, and administrative procedures, led by Lund University.

Chekhros Kilichova