Lecture Series - Society in Transformation

The Politics of Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest

It’s Europe's biggest cultural event and election. But don’t believe the rumours: despite its power to bring Europeans together, the love affair between the Eurovision Song Contest and European integration has been a rocky one. While European political leaders have fallen for the contest, its organiser, the European Broadcasting Union, has historically been wary of getting too close to politics. In his talk, Dean Vuletic dispels myths about Eurovision and highlights the example of Switzerland to show that, although the contest has been a soundtrack to European integration, it has persisted for almost seventy years by never becoming too political.

Dr. Dean Vuletic is historian of contemporary Europe who specialises in the Eurovision Song Contest, including as a prominent media commentator and public speaker. He began teaching the world’s first university course on Eurovision at New York University and, as a researcher at the University of Vienna, he wrote the first-ever scholarly book on the history of the contest, Postwar Europe and the Eurovision Song Contest. Dean holds a PhD in modern European history from Columbia University, and he currently teaches at the University of Luxembourg.