Events

Research colloquia 2024-2025

Colloquia are normally scheduled from 15:30 to 17:00 in the Spiegelzaal (Grote Gracht 80-82), but might be moved online or as hybrid session (Zoom) if necessary.

11 September 2024 – Political Philosophy

Presentations:

• Andrew Scerri (Virginia Tech), Representation and Political Stability: The Promise and the Slippery Slope of Power-Sharing
• Timofey Agarin (Queens University Belfast), Freedom and Equality, Faction and Party: Learning from E.E. Schattschneider in the context of the current crisis of democracy

Discussant: John Parkinson

***********************

9 October 2024 – Political behaviour

Presentations:

• Luana Russo, Negative Partisanship in Europe

• Michele Fenzl, We Shall Be Free to Change Our Minds! Time Discounting and Policy Reversibility: A Randomized Survey Experiment

   

Discussant: Mirko Heinzel

***********************

6 November 2024 (14:00 - 15:00) – PCE Democracy cluster 

Presentation:

• Eli Sapir, Europe united? Assessing European integration through Eurovision Song Contest voting communities

***********************

6 November 2024 (15:30 - 17:00) – European History and Tradition

Presentation:

• Joep Leerssen, The invention of Europe’s tradition

Discussant: Aleksandra Komornicka

***********************

11 December 2024 (14:00 - 15:00) – PCE Democracy cluster 

Presentation:

• Alfred Moore (guest speaker), Democracy As Play

***********************

11 December 2024 (15:30 - 17:00) – EU Politics

Presentations:

• Johan Adriaensen and Sabina Lange (EIPA/ University of Lubljana), National coordination of EU policies: a comparative appraisal
• Christine Neuhold and Rik de Ruiter (Leiden University), The European Union: an interdependent multi arena system: a research note

Discussant: Sophie Vanhoonacker

***********************

6 February 2025  – Politics, media and disinformation: past and present

Presentations:

• Betto van Waarden, Politics fast and slow: An Internationally Comparative Typology of Time in Media and Politics
• Mariëlle Wijermars, Russian information suppression in the European Union

Discussant: Helen Zhang

***********************

19 February 2025 (14:00 - 15:00) – PCE Democracy cluster 

Presentation:

• Bart Stol (guest speaker), Europa Archief Mathieu Segers

***********************

19 February 2025 (15:30 - 17:00) – International governance and organization

Presentations:

• Mirko Heinzel, Bernhard Reinsberg (University of Glasgow) and Samantha Custer (College of William and Mary), Good Governance and the legitimacy of International Organizations 
• Clara Weinhardt, Klaus Dingwerth (University of St. Gallen) and Julian Eckl (University of St. Gallen), The hidden crisis of the rules-based global order: on contestation of differential treatment for developing countries

Discussant: Soetkin Verhaegen

***********************

3 April 2025 – Special session: PhD candidates

Presentations:

• Daphné Charotte, Civil Society Advocacy and Resource Exchange in United Nations Protection of Civilians Policies

• Wicke van den Broeck, Democracy promotion in a shrinking civic space – Polish NGOs and the Eastern neighbourhood between 2015 and 2023

Discussant: Elissaveta Radulova

***********************

7 May 2025 - Special session: NWO Vidi ACCESS4ALL

Presentations:

• Susanne Eiselt, Iskander De Bruycker, Sandra Martinez Bohme and Britt Vande Walle, Who are the Lobbyists?
• Sandra Martinez Böhme, Britt Vande Walle, Iskander De Bruycker and Susanne Eiselt, About Venus and Mars: How Gender Composition Structures Party-Interest Group Interactions

Discussant: Andreea Nastase

***********************

5  June 2025 - Special session: Research Masters students

Presentations:

• Sebastian Emde, Depoliticizing Participation? The European Commission’s Approach to Citizen Involvement in Climate Policy
• Odile Feltkamp, Empowering the Commission: The Role of Trilogue Negotiations in EU Defensive Trade Instruments

Discussant: Thomas Conzelmann 

***********************

Past sessions

5 June 2024 – Understanding the role of civil society in Europe

Presentations:

• Daphné Charotte, “Non, merci.” Explaining why the French military is not receptive to NGO advocacy on civilian protection.
• Francesca Colli, Up in smoke: entrepreneurship and opportunities in the movement to end fossil fuel advertising

Discussant: Iskander De Bruycker

15 May 2024 – 17:00 - 18:00 (Democracy cluster)

Presentation: 

• Lorena De Vita (Assistant Professor of History and International Relations at Utrecht University), Negotiating Reparations after Hitler: The Jurist who Walked Out of the Room 

8 May 2024 – Climate politics and policies in Europe

Presentations:

• Karin van Leeuwen and Koen van Zon (Studio Europa), Enforcing European environmental law from below: the case of the post-seveso directives
• Elissaveta Radulova, Aneta Spendhzarova and Susanne Reithler, Financing the European Union’s Sustainability Transition:  Mission-oriented or Mission Impossible?

Discussant: Francesca Colli

3 April 2024 – Deciphering Euroscepticism

Presentations:

• Christine Arnold, The divided Public: Dynamics of Heterogeneity of European Public Opinion toward European Integration
• Patrick Bijsmans and Luca Mancin, What Do We Talk About When We Talk About Euroscepticism?

Discussant: Soetkin Verhaegen

13 March 2024 – 16:00-17:00 (Democracy cluster)

Presentation:

• Johan Adriaensen & Sabina Lange, The European Union and its members

28 February 2024 – Exploring the European Neighbourhood

Presentations:

• Assem Dandashly, Crises, Conflicts and the Collapse of Democratic Institutions: The case of Lebanon
• Giselle Bosse, Europe's spectacular moment of empathy (and how it was lost): The role of emotions in the EU's response to the Russian war against Ukraine

Discussant: Yf Reykers

25 January 2024 – 16:00-17:00 (Democracy cluster)

Presentation:

• Jonathan Floyd (University of Bristol), Public Political Philosophy

24 January 2024 – European Post-war history and memory

Presentations:

• Felix Streicher, Second-Class Occupiers? Legitimizing Occupational Rule in the Luxembourg Occupation Zone in Germany (1945–49)
• Aline Sierp, and Lorena Ortiz Cabrero (UC Louvain), Italian Memory: Leading the Future?

Discussant: Pablo del Hierro

13 December 2023 – Polish Foreign Policy, past and present

Presentations:

• Aleksandra Komornicka (Book presentation), Poland and European East-West Cooperation in the 1970s: The Opening Up
• Wicke van den Broeck and Giselle Bosse, Democratisation by default? The Giedroyc doctrine and Belarus in 21st century Polish foreign policy 

Discussant: Petar Petrov

15 November 2023 – The politics of media

Presentations:

• Michele Fenzl, The News We Choose: Unfair Inequality and the Growing Success of Populist News
• Eli Sapir, A data-driven, three-step solution for optimizing media frame analysis: Reassessing the Brexit Referendum media discourse

Discussant: TBC

11 October 2023 – 14:00-15:00 – Grant application (Democracy cluster)

Presentation: 

• Karin van Leeuwen, Judicialization of politics

13 September 2023 – Europe and the World

Presentations:

• Anna Herranz Surralles, Chard Damro and Sandra Eckert,  The Geo-Economic Turn of the European Single Market? Empirical trends and conceptual challenges
• Yf Reyckers, Christoph Meyer (KCL) and Ton van Osch, Learning successes and pathologies in the development of European Union rapid response forces

Discussant: Clara Weinhardt

***********************

7 June 2023 - The decline and death of international organisations: conclusions the ERC project

Presentations: 

• Hylke Dijkstra
• Laura von Allwörden
• Guiseppe Zaccharia

Discussant: Camilo Erlichman

10 May 2023 - Bringing in the market: understanding trust and political behavior in their economic context

Presentations:

• Esther Versluis, Niklas Michel & Aneta Spendzharova, Knowledge, engagement, and shared values: analysing the drivers of trust in the European network of financial market authorities
• Toon van Overbeke and Tommaso Crescioli (LSE), Market concentration, superstar firms and political behaviour in Europe

Discussant: Johan Adriaensen

5 April 2023 - Decentring the EU: looking at European practices from the outside

Presentations:

• Assem Dandashly and Christos Kourtelis, EU Practices and decentring: Decentralization and anti-corruption in the MENA
• Andreea Nastase, Lobbying as a profession – exploring the role of private associations in the professionalization of lobbying in the EU and US  

Discussant: Yf Reykers  

8 March 2023 - Drivers and effects of European integration: studying culture and crises

Presentations:

• Riccardo Bosticco, European Corporate Actors Amidst Geoeconomic Rivalry: Exploring Options in Renewable Technologies
• Jobke Visser, An Ever Gayer Union: A Historical Analysis of the Activities of the International Lesbian and Gay Association, 1978-2002
• Bjarn Eck, Every rose has its thorn? The impact of the electoral cycle on affective polarization

Discussant: Anna Herranz

1 February 2023 - What is politics, and how should it be analysed (and defended)?

Presentations:

• Carlo Burelli (University of Chicago) and Janosch Prinz, A vindicatory functionalist genealogy of politics  
• Book presentation: Carlos Domper Lasús (University of Zaragoza) and Giorgia Priorelli (University of Girona), Combining Political History and Political Science. Towards a New Understanding of the Political

Discussant: Luana Russo

14 December 2022 - Civil society organisations in political representation and litigation: opportunities and effects

Presentations:

• Iskander de Bruycker, Evelien Willems, (University of Antwerp), Marcel Hanegraaff (University of Amsterdam), Champions of the poor? Civil society mobilization and the congruence gap between rich and poor segments of the public  
• Francesca Colli, EU Law and social movements: multilevel legal opportunity structures

Discussant: Karin van Leeuwen

16 November 2022 - Norms under threat: the EU’s responses to rights violations within and across its Eastern borders

Presentations:

• Giselle Bosse, Values, rights and changing interests: The EU’s Response to the war against Ukraine and the Responsibility to Protect Europeans
• Akudo McGee, Outsourcing the defence of EU norms: the mobilisation of civil society to protect rule of law and human rights in Poland

Discussant: Petar Petrov

12 October 2022 - The powers of the European Parliament: recent developments

Presentations:

• Book presentation: Adina Akbik (Leiden University), The European Parliament as an Accountability Forum: Overseeing the Economic and Monetary Union (Cambridge University Press, 2022)
• Michael Shackleton, Is the Spitzenkandidaten experiment dead?

Discussant: Christine Arnold

14 September 2022 - Meetings of the research clusters

***********************

14 June 2022
PCE research conference

1 June 2022
Karin van Leeuwen: Building the international legal order from below. National courts as international actors in the 'land of Grotius' (1919-1939)

Thomas Conzelmann: The EU and the global politics of leverage

20 April 2022
Alvaro Oleart: The Conference on the Future of Europe: A Genealogy of the ‘citizen’ turn in the European Union

Patrick Bijsmans: Euroscepticism and European Parliament Elections

30 March 2022
Yf Reykers: The European Peace Facility: a gift or a curse for the African peace and security complex?

Sophie Vanhoonacker: Organisational learning in the European External Action Service

23 February 2022
Iskander de Bruycker: New Media and Old Politics: How Social Media Advocacy Varies Across Political Systems

Eli Sapir: Measurement invariance (configural, metric and scalar) in trust in EU news media sources

26 January 2022
Pablo del Hierro (with Lucas Lixinski, UNSW Sydney): Between Politics and Technique: Designing International Extradition Law 1945-2000

Paul Stephenson: the coordination of trans-European networks (transport policy) 

8 December 2021
How the EU Makes Its Legislation Work: presentation of the book project by Ellen Mastenbroek, Oliver Treib, and Esther Versluis

10 November 2021
Manling Yang: Comparing the development policies of China and the EU towards Africa in the 21st Century

Giuseppe Zaccharia: International public administrations, organizational structure, and the challenges to global institutions: The case of the World Bank

6 October 2021
Klaartje Peters & Tom Verhelst: Explaining Effective Council Scrutiny: a Multilevel Analysis from Local Councils in The Netherlands

Luana Russo: Divide and Conquer: disentangling Negative Partisanship and Affective Polarisation

***********************

17 June 2021
PCE research conference

2 June 2021
Giuseppe Zaccaria: International Public Administrations and the crisis of the global order: The case of the WTO bureaucracy

Vincent Lagendijk: The Tennessee Valley Authority and post-1945 international organisation IOs

28 April 2021
Luana Russo: Political polarization, primaries and satisfaction with democracy: the party organization conundrum

Janosch Prinz: The democratic value of currency and the ethics of public debt: A political theory perspective on the Eurosystem beyond moralism and technocracy

31 March 2021
Laura von Allwörden: US withdrawal from the Paris Agreement and its effects on the UNFCCC's legitimacy

Francesca Colli: Think tanks in EU-policymaking

3 March 2021
Gergana Noutcheva: Introduction to the special issue

Assem Dandashly: A model no more? Debating Turkish influence in the Southern neighbourhood

Tom Casier (Brussels School of International Studies): Russia and the diffusion of political norms: the perfect rival?

27 January 2021
Soetkin Verhagen: The Elite-Citizen Gap in International Organization Legitimacy

Maria Debre: International Organizations in Decline? Conceptualizing and Measuring IGO Lifecycles

16 December 2020
Aline Sierp: Colonialism – Europe’s Shared Forgotten Past

Camilo Erlichman: Military Occupation and the Making of Post-War Democracy: The British in Italy and Germany

18 November 2020
Yf Reykers: With the lights out, we’re less dangerous: Explaining parliamentary control of defence procurement

Leonard Schütte: Is NATO in decline? Assessing the impact of the Trump Presidency on the Atlantic Alliance

Oct 14, 2020
Mariëlle Wijermars: The social media law that wasn’t: rethinking Russian internet governance

Aneta Spendzharova: Hybrid governance in international finance: the orchestration of trade reporting for derivatives (with Lucia Quaglia (University of Bologna))

***********************

27 May 2020
Andreea Nastase and Cristian Surubaru, How to regulate and govern? From 'Governing Tensions' between 'Eastern' and 'Western' EU Member States to Regulating Lobbying in the EU

19 February 2020
Christine Arnold and John Parkinson: Tracking Public debate and Political Responsiveness

John Parkinson: A Research Strategy to Track Public Debate

22 January 2020
Anna Herranz and Jaap Hoogenboezem: Issues of Security: From “Democratic Control of Security” to “Hybrid Warfare”

Anna Herranz: Settling it on the field? The multi-level parliamentary field of EU foreign and security policy

Jaap Hoogenboezem: Reaping the whirlwind: the dangers of hybrid warfare

4 December 2019

Giselle Bosse: Promoting Common Values: What factors make (and break) democratic reform progress in Eastern Partnership countries and the wider post-Soviet area?

Clara Weinhardt: Negotiating trade in uncertain worlds: Misperception and contestation in EU-West Africa relations

6 November 2019
Christine Neuhold: Subsidiarity watchdogs’ and the ‘kennel’ of trilogues: when do they bark? The role of national parliaments in the EU decision-making process

Iskander De Bruycker: A Blessing or Curse for Congruence? How interest mobilization affects congruence between voters and elected representatives in the European News Media

9 October 2019
Jaap Hoogenboezem: The Politics of Physics

Geert Somsen with Georgiana Kotsou: The Scientific Conference: A Social, Cultural, and Political History

11 September 2019
Johan Adriaensen, Patrick Bijsmans & Afke Groen: Designing the curriculum: towards a systematic comparison

Hylke Dijkstra: Curriculum development, disciplinary reference frameworks, and European Studies in Maastricht