Prof. Bianchini's main field of studies currently concerns
the following topics:
a. Modernity and development: ideas and itineraries of Eastern
Europe between 19th and 20th century.
b. Liquid Nationalism and State partition in Europe.
c. Ethnopolitics and energy issues in the Adriatic-Caspian
corridor.
d. EU-Russian-Chinese relations
e. Western Balkan political developments and the EU
enlargement.
Prof. Bianchini's main research fields are focusing on
Politics and Political Culture in the Balkans, Nationalism and state partition with a specific focus on 20th century Europe, Current
institutional and political problems of the transition in the
Balkans, the idea of State, Modernization and Backwardness not only
in the Balkans but also in the wider Eastern Europe (Including
Russia/USSR), China and Russia, Balkans geopolitics, History of the Balkans during
the 20th Century, Yugoslav history, International and regional
relationships with particular attention to the Italian-Balkans
relations since the Balkans wars.
As for his research, Prof. Bianchini had the opportunity to work
in the Tito's archives and at the archives of the Yugoslav Ministry
of Foreign Affairs in Belgrade. Later, he was a Visiting Fellow of
the Columbia Research Institute of Scholars at Reid Hall in Paris
for a specific study on State partitions with Indian and European
colleagues. He has also conducted researches in Bulgaria and
Albania, as well as in Russia. As an expert witness at the ICTY he had the opportunity to assess evidences during the Yugoslav succession wars based on thousands of original documents.
A new book on modernity and development in Eastern Europe was published in 2015 and the paperback in 2016. The book is unique in Italy and at the
international level, as it analyzes synthetically the most relevant
debates on development with an interdisciplinary and transnational
approach. The title is Eastern Europe and the Challenges of Modernity 1800-2000, Routledge.
Recently he focused on nationalism and state partition in Europe. A new book has been published in September 2017 by Edward Elgar under the title Liquid Nationalism and State Partitions in Europe.
Since 1980s, he has extensively published on social and
political events related to the Yugoslav society, as well as on
Balkan nationalism, either in comparative perspective or through
in-depth analysis of the Yugoslav secession wars. Prof. Bianchini
has gone beyond the wide and systematic international literature on
State building theories and nationalism in methodology, by
strengthening the relevance of the interdisciplinary approach (in
terms of historical, sociological, economic, legal, political and
cultural interactions). He was one of the few scholars in the world
that openly alerted policy makers about the risk of nationalism in
Yugoslavia (since 1981) and then of a war. Furthermore, his open
approach to the key topics of his research has allowed him to
develop a comparative perspective: in other words, he did not
restrict the study to the Balkans only (in spite of the fact that
this is the region that he knows insightfully), but he has been
acute in scholar sensitivity by collecting research studies from
the Balkans to other European regions (as the Baltic sea area) or
India (highly influenced by the Yugoslav model during the non
Aligned Movements experience). Prof. Bianchini has emphasized a
sort of continuity in his mainstream research, while offering
repeatedly new angles of visions (for instance in the EU-Balkans
relations, or in the incompatibility between democracy and
nationalism), new interpretations (currently on ethnopolitics and
energy issues, as well as in diversity management applied to
multicultural democracies), and a tremendous prismatic approach to
Politics and History of the Balkans using interdisciplinary and
comparative approaches.
As a result, Prof. Bianchini has been consultant of the ICTY in
The Hague, as well as of the World Bank, and has conducted research
for the European Commission, the Central European Initiative, and
the Italian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, by producing policy papers
and recommendations on concrete actions to be taken for dialogue,
peace, cooperation in SEE. He is also cooperating with different
Universities and institutions in the United States and in
Europe.
As for the relations between EU, China and Russia, Prof. Bianchini is leading a 3-years international research project of the Forlì Unit of the Department of Political and Social Science under the title "Russia and China in the Global World. State and Society between domestic dynamics and International Projections". The project came to an end in January 2018 leading to the publications of two books, both co-edited together with Antonio Fiori. The first one is in Italian: Russia e Cina nel mondo globale. Due potenze fra dinamiche interne e internazionali (Carocci, Roma, 2018) while the other was published by Brill, Leiden under the title: Rekindling the Strong State in Russia and China (2020). Previously, prof. Bianchini led a research project
in 2007 with the cooperation of the Universities
of Leuven, Turku, Bristol and the Coimbra Group on the four spaces
of cooperation between EU and Russia. The project included a conference on the
consequences of the elections in 2008 and the open energy issues
between the EU and Russia. The meeting was carried out with the
cooperation of the Italian Association of Slavists, the United
Democratic Center of Moscow and the Universities of MGU, RGGU and
the State University at St. Petersburg. Recently a study on the history of the EU-Russian relations has been prepared for the Spanish journal "Ayer" and will be published soon.
In the end, the studies on post-communist transition and EU
Enlargement Eastwards are focusing on post-communist stabilization
and the role of EU conditionality and are regularly monitored by prof. Bianchini.
