Critical, Bottom-up and Material Geopolitics of the European Union in the Black Sea

The Russia-Ukraine War has elevated the geopolitical significance of the Black Sea. The sea has become a site of military battles, blockaded trade routes, and environmental degradation.

The entanglement of this body of water with many contentious developments underscores the need for a deeper and multifaceted understanding of its role in contemporary geopolitics.

Yet, the military-strategic analysis, which dominates the academic scholarship on the Black Sea, ignores other important geopolitical dimensions, such as interests and knowledge of the local coastal communities and the materiality of the sea water in shaping geopolitical relations.

The project, therefore, aims for a critical, bottom-up and material geopolitical reframing of the Black Sea in which the body of water and its coasts remain both a central object of analysis and a key site of study of geopolitics.

Empirically, the research focuses on the Black Seas role in the European Unions (EU) geopoliticization of its European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) since 2014. It investigates the Black Seas role in the European Unions geopolitical agenda and practice.

Methodologically, the research brings different geographical scales and vantage points on the Black Sea geopolitics together, such as the EU institutions in Brussels, coastal communities on the Black Sea, and the sea itself, in order to capture various elements and phases of EUs practice of geopolitics from inception to implementation and finally, effect and impact.