Tomas Dumbrovský has been awarded ERC Consolidator grant

The very prestigious ERC Consolidator grant has been awarded to Tomáš Dumbrovský for his project Community Through Constitution. Researching how Constitutions Construct Identity and Legitimacy in Europe and MENA.

Tomáš Dumbrovský heads the Institute for Interregional Studies of Constitutionalism at our faculty. In 2021, he was awarded an ERC CZ grant, which is awarded by the Ministry of Education, Youth and Sports of the Czech Republic to applicants who have already received a high rating from the European Research Council for their proposed project, but did not receive its financial support due to lack of money in the budget. This year, however, Tomáš Dumbrovský the ERC Consolidator grant did not slip away. As he says himself, his broad view of constitutionalism and comparative constitutional law gained during his study and research trips around the world helped him to succeed. In addition to graduating from the Faculty of Social Sciences at CU and the Faculty of Law, where he pursued his doctoral studies, he gained a great deal of experience at the prestigious Yale Law School in the USA, where he obtained his second doctorate, and at the European University Institute in Italy, where he completed his postdoctoral studies. In addition, he has a long-term appointment at the Doha Institute of Graduate Studies in Qatar, which has had a significant impact on his research on how constitutions shape the collective identity of people in countries in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.

“Our project responds to the rise of populism. Whereas a decade ago we might have looked at it as an anomaly that would disappear over time, today we see that this is not the case. The economic crisis in Europe and the Arab Spring have triggered social processes leading to populism. In democratic elections, populist parties win, and this phenomenon is clearly visible and similar in different countries around the world, and we must study why. The comparison of the two cultural worlds will allow us to get to the heart of the problem and the possible solution, which we see in the stimulation of constitutional discourse so that collective identity is formed within its framework on the basis of a greater interconnection between global (especially human rights) and local cultural norms, which will ultimately lead to a more pluralistic and tolerant society,” Dumbrovský explains. The fresh ERC recipient is also one of the first successful applicants for the Primus grant, which since 2017 has been awarded by Charles University to promising male and female scientists to kick-start their research teams and projects.

What are ERC Consolidator grants? They are grants for outstanding young scientists at a stage in their career when they need to expand or strengthen, i.e. consolidate, their own independent research team or programme. The purpose of all grants awarded by the European Research Council is to support frontier research that has the potential to fundamentally advance existing knowledge and lead to breakthroughs on an international or global scale.