News from the ECMI InfoChannel

The first Management Committee (MC) meeting of the PLURILINGMEDIA Action (CA23105) was held on October 2, 2024, at the COST Association headquarters in Brussels. This gathering marks a key moment in the initiative’s journey to protect and promote linguistic plurality in Europe’s rapidly changing media landscape. Spearheaded by the ECMI, the Action seeks to tackle the challenges posed by digitalisation and the dominance of larger languages in the media, and to support the use of regional and minority languages.

In July 2025, a new and significant edited volume on minority-language media was released—a collaborative initiative led by the ECMI together with the University of the Basque Country. Published by Palgrave Macmillan/Springer Nature in the renowned Palgrave Studies in Minority Languages and Communities series, the book expands the existing research landscape with a rich variety of thematic and geographical perspectives.

We are excited to share a new publication by ECMI Senior Researcher Felix Schulte, Juris Pupcenoks (Marist University) and Māris Andžāns (Riga Stradins University/Center for Geopolitical Studies Riga).

The study “Cultural memory and the minority effect in (un-)willingness to fight for the country: Evidence from Russian speakers in Latvia”, published in the European Journal of International Security, shows that Russian speakers in Latvia are less willing the fight for Latvia than ethnic Latvians. The reason is divergent historical memories and narratives. Russian speakers display greater Soviet nostalgia and are less likely to perceive Russia as responsible for the war in Ukraine. This, in turn, reduces their willingness to fight for their country. Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine has brought defence capabilities into sharp focus. The study highlights a “minority effect” and the potentially very different perspectives of minority members about fighting for a state dominated by the majority population. This represents a crucial blind spot in current assessments of national resilience and defence preparedness.

The ECMI recently hosted a workshop at which eminent experts presented innovative minority language revitalisation initiatives that are ongoing in the Basque Country (for Basque), Upper Lusatia (for Sorbian), and Fryslân (for West Frisian). These initiatives focus on three levels that are crucial for minority language revitalisation: society, community, and family. The presentations were followed by a round-table discussion about how these initiatives could be 'translated' into the North Frisian context. The workshop was attended by select stakeholders, practitioners, and academics from key organisations in the region. Representatives from all North Frisian islands as well as the mainland were in attendance. Showing that we don't always have to reinvent the wheel, the workshop provided inspiration for potential future endeavours to aid in the revitalisation of North Frisian.

On 5 November 2025, we hosted the presentation of an outstanding book that sheds light on the history, culture, and current realities of the indigenous people of Crimea. The event featured a moving reading by author and activist Elnara Nurieva-Letova, alongside excerpts from a documentary series tracing Crimean Tatar heritage in Germany. Our heartfelt thanks go to the editors Sarah Reinke (Society for Threatened Peoples, GfbV) and Dr. Mieste Hotopp-Riecke (Institute for Caucasica-, Tatarica- and Turkestan Studies, ICATAT) for their dedicated work and inspiring insights.

The Denmark-Germany border region is home to Danish, German, Sinti & Roma and North Frisian minorities – a place shaped by shifting borders and history, today seen as a model for peaceful coexistence.Our former intern Sophie Cooper (University of St Andrews) collected personal stories from members of some communities. Through interviews, she transformed their lived experiences into short digital stories (2–5 minutes), combining voice, images, and music. These stories explore identity, belonging, and life between cultures. 👉 The videos invite you to listen, watch, and reflect on what it means to live as a minority across borders.

UPDATE: 

We are delighted to announce that the project “Promoting Intercultural Dialogue through Digital Storytelling” has been selected as a winner of the Student Minority Projects Challenge 2025, organized by the Academic Network for Minority Issues! 

As part of the award, Sophie Cooper and Dr. Kyriaki Topidi have been invited to present their work at the UN Forum for Minority Issues in Geneva, taking place on 27–28 November 2025. The award ceremony will be held by UN Special Rapporteur Nicolas Levrat and Governor Arno Kompatscher of the Province of South Tyrol.

Maddi Dorronsoro Olamusu delivered a public lecture in Azkoitia (Basque Country) as part of the Euskola series, which focuses on the Basque language and sociolinguistics. Organised by Maxixatzen euskaldunon taldea, a local Basque-language activist group, the event brought together community members interested in arnasguneak—communities with a high concentration of Basque speakers—which she examines from an attitudinal perspective. The lecture received coverage in local media, was recorded, and made available online. A few days later, Maddi participated in the International Conference on Territories of Higher Speaker Density in Minoritised Language Communities and presented her research in Zestoa and Segura (both in the Basque Country).

Over the past two months, the ECMI was represented at two leading academic hubs for Ukrainian Studies in Germany, where ECMI postdoctoral researcher Elmira Muratova shared insights from her ongoing research on Crimean Tatars.The contributions highlight ECMI’s continued engagement with cutting-edge scholarship on Ukraine and minority communities affected by the ongoing war.

Angesichts der aktuellen geopolitischen Entwicklungen stellt sich erneut die dringende Frage, welche Zukunft der indigenen Bevölkerung der Krim – den Krimtataren – bevorsteht.

Wir laden am Mittwoch, den 5. November 2025, von 16:00 bis 18:00 Uhr, herzlich zur Buchvorstellung „Die Krimtataren. Geschichte – Kultur – Politik“ in den Konferenzraum des ECMI in Flensburg ein.

Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea marked the beginning of a systematic campaign of repression against the indigenous Crimean Tatar minority. ECMI researchers Elmira Muratova and Felix Schulte introduce the first comprehensive and geo-coded dataset documenting state repression targeting Crimean Tatars in Crimea. The dataset records almost 700 repression events affecting more than 2,000 individuals in the period 2014 to 2024 and provides detailed information, including the type and severity of repression events.

The Journal on Ethnopolitics and Minority Issues in Europe (JEMIE) is seeking a qualified web designer/developer to carry out a visual and functional update of our website, including our submission platform. Our journal is hosted on Open Journal Systems (OJS), and we aim to modernize the design, improve usability, and enhance the publication workflow for editors, authors, and readers.

We are pleased to announce our successful completion of the “Minority Protection for EU Accession (MPA)” project. Our colleague Dr. Ljubica Djordjević led the initiative, which has been implemented between January 2023 and June 2025 in the Republic of Serbia. Funded by the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) within the framework of the Facility supporting the strengthening of Rule of Law in the Republic of Serbia, the project aimed to strengthen the protection of national minorities in line with EU accession criteria (Chapter 23).

This summer, our colleague Maddi Dorronsoro Olamusu has been collaborating weekly with the radio show ‘Faktoria Magazina’ in Euskadi Irratia, the public radio station of the Basque Autonomous Community. Euskadi Irratia broadcasts entirely in Basque, and it can also be listened to in the Chartered Community of Navarre and online.  Each week, Maddi was given a slot to share stories about her life in Flensburg, and she used this occasion to introduce the Basque audience to some of the minority issues in Schleswig-Holstein.