ABSTRACT
European Studies as a field of academic inquiry is often conflated with EU Studies. The Critical European Studies Series seeks to develop a strong grounding in many fields of research in its effort to introduce critical analyses to the study of Europe and the EU that is rooted in a broad spectrum of theoretical perspectives. For the Critical European Studies Series the term ‘critical’ has a dual meaning. First, generally speaking, Critical European Studies seeks to question every single approach and policy that appears to be or it is presented to be as ‘just’, ‘good’ and ‘appropriate’. Second, and more specifically, Critical European Studies question the starting assumptions of traditional approaches to European integration by raising three questions: what is being studied? (ontological questions); what can we know? (epistemological questions); and how are we going to know? (methodological questions).
