This introduction to a multidisciplinary volume, discusses theoretical approaches to ideas of collective and narrative identity, based on the fundamental work of Jan and Aleida Assmann, Paul Ricoeur, and Peter Burke, as a background for the the research carried out by three collaborative research projects under the European Science Foundation , 2010-2014. Together, these projects formed the research programme EuroCORECODE concerned with European national and regional identities, historically as well as in contemporary Europe. In the text, the three projects are also introduced by the authors, who served as their project leaders.