The European Football Championship ― Mega-event and Vanity Fair

Though there is a wealth of research focused on the way in which football becomes a tool and carrier of national identity, the question of whether players and fans, as they experience increasing mobility within Europe, undergo changes through transnational football encounters and whether this may enable individuals to develop a certain reflexive understanding of Europeanness, has been underexplored. Taking Euro 2012 as a departure point, this volume captures how an international and extensively regulated mega-event such as this one emerges as a performance, constructing football subjects and identities. The contributors examine practices, actions, and ways of interpreting the social world of football fans in Europe by drawing upon ethnographic fieldwork in Poland and Germany, as well as an in-depth media analysis.

Basak Alpan is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Political Science and Public Administration, Middle East Technical University, Turkey. Her research interests include European studies, culture and identity dimensions of European integration, discourse theory and European football. She currently works as a researcher for the FP-7 project, 'FREE-Football Research in an Enlarged Europe'.

Alexandra Schwell is an Assistant Professor at the department of European Ethnology, University of Vienna, Austria. Her recent research focuses on issues of identity and Othering, constructions of Self and Other in times of crisis, and the perceptive East-West asymmetry. She currently works as a researcher for the FP-7 project, 'FREE-Football Research in an Enlarged Europe'.

Albrecht Sonntag is a Professor and Director at the Centre for European Integration, ESSCA School of Management, France. His recent research focuses on issues of identity construction such as collective memory, political symbolism and political emotions. He is currently the project coordinator for the FP-7 project, 'FREE-Football Research in an Enlarged Europe'.