Research field and career stage: Humanities, History. Social sciences, Anthropology. Social sciences, Ethnic and cultural studies. Professions, Library and museum studies. Career stage: Recognised Researcher R2.
Associazione culturale Eutopia is a small R&D NGO based in Marche Region, Italy. We work on cultural heritage, public space and audience participation, and we have been a partner in European cooperation projects continuously since 2021, which means there is always fieldwork running somewhere in our portfolio. We host the non-academic placement of MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships, up to six months, as associated partner. The fellowship is hosted by a university; we host the placement and the fieldwork.
On timing, so that nobody wastes a week. A placement written into a 2026 proposal falls in 2028 or 2029. We therefore do not offer you a work package, which would be closed by then. We offer a standing capability: a territory we work in, a set of methods that are ours and that we carry from one project to the next, and a live pilot to attach to, which we name in the proposal on the basis of what is running at that time. The projects listed below are evidence of what we can do, not the site of your placement.
What we offer.
- Field access. Municipalities, schools, cultural operators and associations in the Marche region, and partner organisations in the Balkans, Spain and Portugal. These are relationships that outlive individual grants, which is why we can promise access without knowing yet which project will be paying for the coffee.
- A method that is ours. A protocol for collecting and staging stories on tangible and intangible heritage, combining documentary and scientific material with structured storytelling. It has been applied across four countries and reused as the basis of later work. You extend it, adapt it or contest it: all three are useful to us.
- Data you own and first authorship. Whatever you design, you run and you publish. Eutopia appears in the affiliation line and in the acknowledgements, not in the author list, unless you ask otherwise.
- An instrument that travels. We publish our methodological work under CC BY-SA 4.0 and our tools get picked up and modified by partners in other countries, which carries your name into consortia you did not have to assemble.
- A documented role. A written appointment naming you as scientific lead of the agreed component, your name in the project documentation, and authorship of the corresponding deliverable, so that the work is verifiable by a third party without our word for it.
What we expect.
- A placement component of up to six months, designed with us before submission, with one deliverable and one publishable output.
- Willingness to work in the field with communities, schools and municipalities, and to accept that a pilot has fixed dates.
- No teaching obligation, no administrative duties.
What we have already done.
HOP, History of People. Creative Europe, 2022 call, completed. A methodology combining documentary material with storytelling to record tangible and intangible heritage, four national pilot actions, Eutopia partner and chair of the validation work.
The same methodology was then reused as the basis of a later Creative Europe project on water heritage, which is the kind of continuity we are describing.