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Welcome to TSEP

The Third Sector European Policy (TSEP) network has brought together leading third sector and public policy researchers to analyze the development of European policy towards organisations between the market and the state – variously referred to by commentators as the voluntary sector, nonprofit agencies, the social economy, 'organised civil society' and the third sector. 

The collaborative study conducted since 2002 involved research partners in France, Germany, The Netherlands, Spain, Italy, the Czech Republic, Sweden, and Switzerland coordinated by a core British team. The network’s activities between 2002 and 2005 involved intense country level and Brussels based policy oriented fieldwork, generating a series of publications and reports, as well as policy workshops involving third sector policy actors at the sub-national, national and EU levels. 

Latterly, the main activities of TSEP were centred on the completion of  Handbook on European Third Sector Policy: Multi-level Processes and Organised Civil Society,  published in the UK, Europe and most of the Rest of the World in December 2009 by Edward Elgar Publishing. (The Handbook�will be published in the US in �February 2010) A range of� conference and seminar presentations have been given based upon this work in 2009, with further papers and other dissemination activities ongoing in 2010.

Until 2005 TSEP was based at the Centre for Civil Society at the London School of Economics and was funded by the European Commission and the European Science Foundation. Since 2006, TSEP and related work has been conducted from the School of Sociology, Social Policy and Social Research (SSPSSR)�at the University of Kent, Canterbury.�This later phase of the network’s� work was possible thanks to the financial assistance of the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), and, since September 2008, was supported as part of the Third Sector Research Centre’s programme. The Third Sector Research Centre is jointly funded by the Economic and Social Research Council,the Office for the Third Sector (UK Government), and the Barrow Cadbury Trust. �

More details on the early outputs of the TSEP network, including published reports and papers, information on TSEP members and sources of funding can be found on the original TSEP website hosted by the Center for Civil Society at LSE:

http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/TSEP/

For more on the  recent activities and publications -  including information on how to obtain a discount when purchasing the Handbook, - please see: 

http://www.kent.ac.uk/tsep/publications.html

and

http://www.kent.ac.uk/tsep/news.html