What is SUPI Project?
SUPI – Project is a European Reserarch Group composed by European and International scholars and experts.

Objectives:
a)    analyse and evaluate in depth and with a systemic methodology the complex topics of social precarity, uncertainty and inequality;
b)    provide proposals to reorientate social policies in order to reinforce social cohesion and face all the questions related to social exclusion/inclusion in  a positive and efficient way.

The Group:
SUPI – Project Group was formally born in Berlin on 1 February 2007 during the International Conference “Processes of Social Reorientation within the Social Structure” in cooperation with Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales – Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.
The Group is widely open to the cooperation of qualified European and International experts.

Coordinator of the Group: Prof. Rolf-Dieter HEPP, Freie Universität  Berlin

Head Office: Prof. Rolf-Dieter HEPP, Institut für Soziologie, Politik und Sozialwissenschaften, Freie Universität Berlin – Garystrasse 55 – 14195 Berlin, Deutschland.
Tl. 0049/ 30 3949565  Fax   0049/  30 3913941 3914458 
Email: kerghepp@gmx.de

Past experience of the Group
The decision to create the Group has come after a long period of cooperation and initiatives of the scholars and the expert founders.

April 12, 2003: Prof. Rolf-Dieter HEPP presents a proposal for an integated Project to the European Commission, in order to analyse and evaluate the complex topics of social precarity, uncertainty and inequality in Europe systematically. This Project has been elaborated on the basis of a wide cooperation among experts from excellent European institutes who will go on with their cooperation until the formal constitution of the Group.

The name of the Project is: “Precarity in Socio-structural contexts: differences and similarities in several European countries”.

The presentation of the Project contains its objectives:

“The conditions of life of social actors produce separations and exclusions which raise the level of potential conflicts in Europe. Our investigation will be based on the lines of conflicts in selected European countries and on the question how far those lines of conflicts manifest in similar or different ways due to the various national backgrounds and approaches. Comparative methods ensure the evaluation and the formation of categories concerning the potentiality of social conflicts. The results will lead to conceptualise a homogeneity of terms and categories in the perspective of existing national historical and social processes and inherent characteristics”.

December 9-10, 2005: under Prof. Rolf-Dieter HEPP’s coordination, the experts of the Group meet in Wien in order to participate to the International Conference sponsored by INST (Research Institute for Austrian and International Literature and Cultural Studies) on the topic: “Innovations and Reproductions in Cultures and Societies – IRICS”. The Group makes its considerations and analysis in the Session 1.3 entitled: “Instability and Forms of Deterioration in Society: Social Uncertainty, Insecurity and Precarity”.
(See documentation in the volume: VUNW “Innovations and Reproductions in Cultures and Societies”, INST, Wien 2006 (www.inst.at).

July 24-25, 2006: International Conference at Freie Universitaet in Berlin on the topic: “Uncertainty – Precarity – Inequality : Reorientation in the Social Structure. Self Reference and Medial Forms of Interpretation Samples”.

January 31 – February 1, 2007: at the seat of Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs in Berlin, the Group promotes the International Conference “Processes of Social Reorientation within the Social Structures” in order to elaborate proposals helping in defining the European Social Model.
At the end of the conference SUPI - Project European Group of  Research was formally born (see Collaboration Agreement).
(V.Z.)