From February till April 2019, I have been granted a research scholarship at the Max Planck Institute for European Legal History in Frankfurt am Main. As a guest researcher, I can use the Institute’s extensive library and its databases, as well as its beautiful working facilities – and I greatly…
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Out now: Volume ‘The Informal Construction of Europe’
Europe beyond laws and treaties: my co-editor Lennaert van Heumen (Radboud University Nijmegen) and I are very excited that our volume ‘The Informal Construction of Europe’ has been published with Routledge, as part of the UACES Contemporary European Studies series. Big thanks to our wonderful authors! Get it here: https://goo.gl/syHePH
Continue ReadingWorkshop on personal perceptions of the end of war – ‘War or Peace’ Festival
This weekend (17-21 October), 300 young people from all over the world met at the ‘War or Peace’ Festival in Berlin, organised by the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) and the Maxim Gorki Theatre Berlin. 100 years after the end of World War One, the participants investigated in…
Continue ReadingRunner-up to the 2018 Luke Foster Prize for Best JCER Article with ‘Far Beyond the Treaties’ Clauses’
The academic association for Contemporary European Studies UACES and the Journal of Contemporary European Research (JCER) have announced the winners of this year’s Luke Foster Prize for the best article by an early-career researcher published in JCER. My article ‘Far Beyond the Treaties’ Clauses: The European Parliament’s Gain in Power,…
Continue ReadingNew V-Dem dataset is out: data on democratic development of more than 200 countries from 1789 to 2017
The global data collection project ‘Varieties of Democracy’ (V-Dem) has published a huge new dataset with data on the development of democracy in more than 200 countries worldwide, covering for the first time a period of over 200 years (1789-2017). This is also the first dataset to which I contributed…
Continue ReadingNew article on intra-party group unity in the early European Parliament (Parliamentary Affairs)
This article examines the inner unity of the European Parliament’s (EP) party groups prior to its first direct elections in 1979, at a time when such unity was technically not necessary, given the EP’s dominantly consultative role, according to the Treaties; and when no electoral incentives and few disciplinary tools…
Continue ReadingCfP deadline coming up: Second Graduate Conference on European Integration History, Florence
Our Second Annual Graduate Conference on the History of European Integration will take place on 10-12 September 2018 at the European University Institute in Florence. You can submit an abstract until 31 March 2018. The Annual Graduate Conference on the History of European Integration is a joint initiative between the…
Continue ReadingJoined the great data collection project V-Dem
Now it is official: I am very happy to take over the roll as country coordinator on Luxembourg at the great data collection project Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem), which aims to provide a new approach to conceptualising and measuring democracy worldwide. It compiles “a multidimensional and disaggregated dataset that reflects…
Continue ReadingContract signed with Routledge: ‘The Informal Construction of Europe’
Big step for our project on ‘The Informal Construction of Europe’: today, my co-editor Lennaert van Heumen and I signed a contract with Routledge for an edited volume. Our authors are working on their contributions concerning ideas, actors and procedures which had an impact on European integration through informal processes.…
Continue ReadingSpecial Issue out: New Research on EU Supranational Activism
This special issue, which I guest-edited with Prof. David Howarth, introduces the concept of ‘activism’ to the study of EU supranational institutions and their role in EU policy making and European integration. While long present in studies of the European Court of Justice, ‘activism’ has rarely been examined systematically in…
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