P.J. Stephenson, Ph.D.
Please also see his website at: https://paulstephensonacademic.wordpress.com/
He is a member of the Department of Political Science, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and has worked at FASoS since 2006.
In 2020-2023 Paul J. Stephenson was Director of Studies of the MA European Studies and the MA European Public Affairs. He was also Associate Director of UM’s Campus Brussels.
In 2021 he published a co-edited volume Financial Accountability in the European Union: Institutions, Policy and Practice within the UACES/Routledge book series, Routledge: Oxford
In late 2019 he published a co-edited special issue in German Political Science Quarterly on the policy evaluation in the EU. See Stephenson, P. J., Schoenefeld, J. J. and Leeuw, F. L. (2019) ‘The Politicisation of Evaluation: Constructing and Contesting EU Policy Performance’, German Political Science Quarterly/Politische Vierteljahresschrift, 60(4): 663-815. Special issue published in English and open access.
In 2013-2015 he was a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the Centre d’études européennes, part of Sciences Po, Paris, where he undertook a research project entitled APPLAUD (Accountability and Public Policy Audit in the European Union), which explored issues of financial accountability and the politics of institutionalising the audit functions around the EU budget.
He set up the EUFINACCO interdisciplinary research network (Financial Accountability in the EU), which he co-convenes with María-Luisa Sánchez-Barrueco (Deusto) and Hartmut Aden (Berlin). EUFINACCO was recognised as a UACES Collaborative Research Network (CRN) for 2015-2018.
He co-edited a volume on European Space Policy (Routledge 2016) and co-authored the textbook Analyzing the European Policy Process (Palgrave 2011) which is used to teach the BA ES second year course 'Policy Domains'.
From 2008 to 2013 he was Director of Studies of the MA in European Studies, the faculty's largest masters programme. From 2010 to 2015, he was book reviews editor (with Patrick Bijsmans) for the Journal of Common Market Studies.
He holds a PhD and M.Phil in European Studies from the University of Cambridge, where he was a member of the Centre for International Studies and Darwin College. His doctoral thesis examined the historical and political development of Trans-European Networks in transport (TEN-Ts). His first degree of B.A.(Hons) in European Studies was awarded by Royal Holloway, University of London.
His research interests include: theories of integration, policy-making process (from framing and agenda-setting to evaluation and audit), institutions (European Court of Auditors, European Commission, European Parliament, executive EU agencies), European policies (transport/TENs/space, regions/cohesion), politics of France and Spain.
Following his PhD at Cambridge, and before coming to Maastricht University in 2006, Paul worked for five years as a project development officer in the field of EU cohesion policy. He conducted policy research and managed international projects financed by EU Structural Funds (ERDF) for the programme Interreg IIIB North-West Europe (2000-2006), based at the joint technical secretariat in Lille, France. The programme provides support to transnational cooperation projects aimed at improving territorial development and cohesion.
He has lived and worked across Europe: in Cambridge, London (UK), Avignon, Montpellier, Lille, Paris (FR), Seville, Madrid (ES), Brussels (BE) and Maastricht (NL). He was a European Commission intern ('stagiaire') in the Directorate-General for Transport and Energy in the unit for trans-European transport networks. He has studied abroad at the University of Avignon, Montpellier Graduate Business School and University of Seville. He was also a researcher for two years at Sciences Po, Paris, at the Centre d'Etudes Européennes.
