Women’s Narratives and European Integration History

This edited volume arose from the international conference Women’s Narratives and European Integration History, held at the University of Luxembourg on 20–21 April 2023 and organised by the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History (C²DH) with the support of Europe Direct at the University of Luxembourg (2021–2025), a competitive public history project co-funded by the European Union. It contains a series of original chapters, including substantially revised and expanded versions of selected papers first presented at the conference. All texts have been peer reviewed. Both originated in the context of the multiannual research project The Role of Women in European and International Relations in Luxembourg (after the Second World War), developed by the University of Luxembourg and the C²DH. Scholars from universities and advanced research centres across Austria, Germany, France, Norway, Italy, Belgium, Greece, Turkey, Poland, the United Kingdom and Luxembourg, as well as from the European University Institute and the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence, bring a broad range of perspectives, providing new inter- and multidisciplinary insights into theories, methodologies and approaches to the history of women in Europe in the 20th and 21st centuries. Gendered perspectives recast understandings of European democracy, rights, policies, institutions and actors, while digital practices contribute to developing and sharing new knowledge of the past, with emerging sources, notably oral history, and multimedia storytelling centred on the biographies of individual women and their engagement with the European project as both an evolving idea and a lived reality. This broader perspective illuminates a variety of individual and collective dynamics and interconnections, bringing into focus the emergence of pioneering figures, the networks through which influence, presence and visibility were progressively established across Europe and crystallized in the “female lobby”, alongside contributions to East-West intercultural dialogue and EU enlargement that also open up the question of euroscepticism.