Network "Sociology for Societies - Understanding socio-cultural changes in contemporary societies - Soc4Soc"

Background for the establishing of the Soc4Soc network: 
The establishing of Soc4Soc network is based on two pillars. The first one is using previous cooperation between departments of sociology from Zadar, Graz, Brno, and Maribor. These departments have collaborated in the scope of International Graduate Study Program in Cultural Sociology, as well as on several collaborative international research projects and summer schools for years. These diverse and intensive types of cooperation have led to a mutual deep understanding of the partners’ academic goals and research interests, which is used as the framework of the network. So, these partners form the core of the network that is expanded with carefully chosen partners from departments of Split, Ljubljana, Sarajevo, and Novi Sad. The core partners have bilaterally collaborated with added partners via joint conferences, workshops, seminars and mobility exchanges of students and staff. 
This initial insight is broadened by the shared interest to develop a specifically sociological network that will be able to develop locally specific knowledge with the explanatory potential for all participating countries. Croatia, Austria, Czech Republic, Slovenia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Serbia have both overlapping historical backgrounds, but also recently divergent societal developments that need to be detect, research, and interpret in a sociologically sound manner. All the partners are bringing a specific type of expertise to the network, but the same dedication to foster the cooperation through this unique sociological network. The partners are local academic leaders in their regions, so they share the scope and the vision of both research and academic work.
All partners share the same academic ethos that is based on dedicated teaching and research of socio-cultural relevant topics. The academic relationships that have been nurtured for a long time are to be enriched by the framework of Ceepus network. The enlargement of other partners will also be meticulously considered so that the shared ethos would be maintained. Precisely of these long-term connections, this network is surely viable and sustainable.

Aim of the network: 
This network aims to be a cooperation framework for academics who are researching locally and regionally embedded issues that have larger historical and structural origins, as well as societal consequences. These researchers base their findings in sound socio-culturally driven interpretations. The topics include issues of local societal changes embedded in broader socio-economic development, globally imposed modernization onto regional processes, changes in regimes of labor and gender, memory, religion, socially mediated emotions, aging populations, short-term and long-term consequences of global events (i.e., the Covid pandemic). These topics are to be detected and interpreted using tailor-made locally situated conceptual frameworks. Only the network that is composed of sociology departments that have fostered and are dedicated to improving their research and interpretative efforts to understand the interaction of local, national, regional, and global processes can be successful in such an effort. Therefore, this network will foster theoretically based and methodologically rigorous research endeavors that manage both to detect emerging phenomena and to explain societal stemming from the longue durée processes. The network is aiming to educate generations of new researchers sensitive to and especially equipped for investigating social phenomena that challenge social integration and cohesion. 
Partners: 
1.    Department of sociology, University of Zadar, Croatia; coordinator of the network.
https://sociologija.unizd.hr/
https://www.unizd.hr/eng/education/departments

2.    Department of sociology, University of Graz, Austria. 
https://soziologie.uni-graz.at/en/department-of-sociology/

3.    Department of sociology, Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. 
http://gps.fss.muni.cz/

4.    Department of sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Maribor, Slovenia. 
http://www.ff.um.si/oddelki/sociologija/studijski_program.dot

5.    Department of sociology, Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Sarajevo, Bosnia and Herzegovina. 
https://www.unsa.ba/en/org-jedinica/faculty-political-sciences

6.    Department of sociology, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Novi Sad, Serbia. 
http://www.ff.uns.ac.rs/en/admission/bachelor-studies

7.    Department of sociology, Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Split, Croatia. 
http://inet1.ffst.hr/en/departments/sociology

8.    Department of sociology, Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. 
https://sociologija.ff.uni-lj.si/en/node/7253

Objectives of the Soc4Soc network are to foster tightly knit, but flexible network of academics interested and working on theoretically based and methodologically rigorous locally and regionally embedded topics. Additionally, the aim is to educate PhD and MA students in the same manner. All the participating institutions have strong background in interpreting socio-cultural changes in their respective countries but are also dedicated to enrich and enlarge their expertise in interpreting specific phenomena that can have both academic, but also public and social policy uses. The network is drawing from that background to enhance it by nourishing a generation of new researchers especially equipped to investigate emerging phenomena that challenge social integration and cohesion in all participating countries, but also cross-nationally. 

Overall activities: 
-    Exchange of academics and researchers.
-    Exchange of PhD and MA students.
-    Mutual mentoring of PhD candidates, and advanced MA students.
-    Offering of lectures and courses with the focus on basic interest of the network.