Welcome to the ʟᴇxɪ.ᴇᴄᴏ website!
Words shape our world. They influence how we think, act, and relate to others. Yet, across time, borders, and languages, key political and cultural concepts often take on different meanings. Terms like “democracy”, “memory”, or “fascism” may seem universal, but in reality, they carry distinct connotations that reflect specific historical experiences and cultural narratives. This is where ʟᴇxɪ.ᴇᴄᴏ begins.
We’re proud to launch ʟᴇxɪ.ᴇᴄᴏ: a multilingual, digital platform dedicated to tracing the contested and evolving meanings of key political and cultural concepts across Europe, and beyond. Developed by an international consortium of scholars, educators, and cultural practitioners, ʟᴇxɪ.ᴇᴄᴏ is more than a dictionary. It is a space for reflection, dialogue, and mutual understanding.
What Will You Find on the Website?
ʟᴇxɪ.ᴇᴄᴏ offers a growing collection of entries that illuminate the complex lives of concepts.
Each entry includes:
- National case studies that explore specific uses and interpretations of a concept in different countries or languages
- Synthesis text that draws connections between national contexts
- Multimedia materials, such as photographs, videos, historical sources, graphs, and audio to enrich the user experience
- Hyperlinks between entries to map conceptual networks across Europe
All content will be available in multiple widely-read languages, making it accessible to readers with diverse linguistic backgrounds.
Whether you are a student, teacher, journalist, translator, policymaker, or simply a curious citizen, ʟᴇxɪ.ᴇᴄᴏ offers tools to better understand how the words we use and the meanings we assign to them shape the society we live in.
ʟᴇxɪ.ᴇᴄᴏ is driven by an international, interdisciplinary, and intersectoral team of experts from:
- Université de Lille (France – Coordinating Institution)
- Bielefeld University (Germany)
- EuroClio – European Association of History Educators (Netherlands)
- Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Germany)
- University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain)
- University of Tartu (Estonia)
- Center for Urban History of East Central Europe in Lviv (Ukraine)
ʟᴇxɪ.ᴇᴄᴏ is a living project, and we’re always looking for new voices.
We invite:
- researchers (both senior and early career) interested in co-creating the platform with us
- translators interested in bringing our content to other languages
- educators and other practitioners interested in using the lexicon in their work
Sign up to the Newsletter to receive updates on the project.
Start Exploring
Visit www.lexi.eco to browse our entries, learn more about the project, and discover how concepts travel, shift, and spark dialogue across borders.
