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Modern European Literatures Languages and Cultures

Email Federica

Federica G. Pedriali is a Professor of Literary Metatheory and Modern Italian Studies at the University of Edinburgh and a Research Affiliate at the Edinburgh Futures Institute. Her research spans Narratology, Continental Philosophy, Decolonial Studies, Diaspora Studies, Environmental Humanities, Performance Studies, and Political Theory. Currently, she is focused on dissonant heritages and the future of change, building on her previous work on the spatialities of war, totalitarian Europe, and digital humanities.

Federica has authored or edited 24 volumes, including monographs, special issues, and encyclopedic works. She was the Runner-up for the 2018 Marcel Proust Prize for her work on Carlo Emilio Gadda. Her international experience includes Visiting Professorships at Harvard University, the University of Messina, and the University of Pavia.

Federica was elected to the Italian Ambassador’s Scientific Council in London and appointed to the UKRI Talent Panel College, UK Reasearch and Innovation. She has served as an international expert and juror for academic elections and literary awards, including the Strega Prize. Currently, she is the Chair of Europe and World, one of six flagship projects of Una Futura, Una Europa, Brussels.

Federica is dedicated to mentoring early career researchers through the University Council for Languages UK. In 2024, she was awarded a Knighthood (Order of the Star of Italy) for her scholarly achievements and efforts to foster relations between Italy and the UK.

• Personal research interests

I am currently working on Literary Objects and AI for an Oxford Handbook and for a volume on AI and European Studies. I have just finished editing a book on the political thought of Roberto Esposito and will edit The Roberto Esposito Dictionary for Edinburgh University Press. I am coordinating a research network of 35 international scholars as part of a project on materiality and commodification and the invention of Italy in the last 500 years. This will result in an edited book proposal to Toronto University Press. My current monograph project is entitled “Man-Made: The Future of Change”, with intended publisher Minnesota University Press.

• Key research themes

Narratology; Continental Philosophy; Political Theory; Decolonial Studies; Diaspora Studies; Environmental Humanities; Literary Objects, Digital Humanities and AI.

Political Science

Email Chad

In addition to Professor of European Politics, Chad Damro is Co-Director of the Europa Institute and Dean International for Europe at the University of Edinburgh.

• Personal research interests

My research falls within the fields of International Relations and International Political Economy, with particular emphases on international regulatory relations, transatlantic relations and the European Union in international politics. I am particularly interested in exploring both the international and domestic sources of International Relations and the causal interaction of material, institutional and ideational factors.

• Key research themes

European Union external relations.

Social Sciences

Email Franziska

Dr. Franziska Petri works as a postdoctoral researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences at KU Leuven. Within the Horizon Europe project ENSURED, she studies the EU's approach to multilateralism and dynamics in global climate and biodiversity governance. Her research interests are EU foreign policy, EU inter-institutional relations, and EU sustainability policies. Within Una Europa, she is a member of the SSC Europe and the World and works towards implementing activities under the Auditorium Europe workstream. This includes the organization of peer-to-peer learning and scholar-practitioner events.

• Personal research interests

Broadly speaking, it's all about understanding EU influence in global sustainability governance and international politics more broadly. I am working, among others, on 'leftovers' of my PhD research (DELCED project) which was about how EU Delegations, the EU quasi-embassies present in around 140 locations across the globe, implement EU foreign policy ambitions and face local contestation. As such, I am intrigued by how the EU and its individual diplomats across the globe promote bilateral relations as well as specific EU interests in diverse contexts (e.g. pro/against EU perceptions, high/low climate ambitions and/or vulnerabilities). In my current postdoc research (ENSURED project), we study contestation in multilateralism, focusing on the EU's approach to multilateralism and potential for reform in global governance (for example the way how the annual climate conferences work). Lastly, I am always interested in intra-EU policy-making dynamics, for example the coordination between different institutions for the development of coherent (external) policies as well as the internal reflection processes surrounding foreign policy (e.g. decentring agenda).

• Key research themes

European Union, sustainability, foreign policy.

International Economics

Email Hylke

Hylke is currently a full professor in International Trade at KU Leuven in the Faculty of Economics and Business. Her research focuses on firm level exports, transition to greener products via trade agreements, EU trade policy and its effect on firms etc. She teaches classes amainly at Masters level, involving topics such as Global Value Chains, Trade theories and European trade policy. Hylke started her academic career at Universiteit Antwerpen, then continued to study and teach at the University of Cambridge (UK) and later also at the University of Louvain-la-neuve, where she was a professor in Trade before coming to KU Leuven to become the head of the International Economics research group.

While not currently actively involved in the design of Una Europa, Hylke follows the alliance's activities and also attends meetings whenever possible because she feels it offers many opportunities for the future and strengthens European ties in education and research.

• Personal research interests
• Key research themes

Trade, trade policy, firm-level exports and the drivers of performance on the supply side and demand side.

International Relations

Email Edith

Edith Drieskens is an Associate Professor of International Relations at the LINES where she teaches courses on international organisations, international relations theories and academic writing. Her work explores the regional dimension of global governance from a conceptual, theoretical and empirical point of view, focusing on the EU’s functioning in multilateral settings (mainly, but not exclusively) post-Lisbon (UN Security Council, UN General Assembly, UNESCO, WADA). Ongoing research examines the EU as a heritage (actor) in international relations (Traditional Chinese Medicine, contested heritage). Her research has appeared in a variety of international journals, including Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of European Integration, European Security, Journal of Common Market Studies and Public Administration. She is co-editor of The Sage Handbook of European Foreign Policy (Sage, 2015).

• Personal research interests
• Key research themes

EU actorness/power; EU-UN relations; EU heritage (contested heritage, traditional medicine).

Economics

Email Laurine

Laurine Martinoty is Assistant Professor in Economics at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. She is a member of the research group International Economics and Labor Markets at Centre d'économie de la Sorbonne. Her research focuses on household responses to shocks. She is particularly interested in the effects of international trade and technological change on gender norms for women and men in Europe. She is a member of the of the Academic Steering Committee of the Una Europa Joint Bachelor in European Studies, in addition to the Self-Steering Committee in Europe and the World.

• Personal research interests

My past research focuses on how households, and women within these households, adapt to economic shocks, and notably how they adjust their labor supply, or their consumption behavior with respect to men's. I have also been interested in how the green transition, through mine closures, affect social outcomes such as domestic violence around closed mines, through shifts in bargaining power of women and men living around these mines. In my current research project, I investigate how gender norms differ across women and men following the impact of economic shocks (in the form of the Great Recession, or structural transformations such as technological/trade shocks. In another research project, I investigate how recent attitudes towards migration can be shaped by the past experience of alterity (measured as the time spent in the army during decolonisation).

• Key research themes

Gender, family, development, natural resources, labor, technology, AI shocks, trade shocks, polarisation.

Political Science

Email Sarah

Sarah is an Associate Professor in Political Science at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne and the Deputy Director of the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique. She has held many fellowships abroad, including at Columbia University, at New York University and at the University of Cambridge. She is a political sociologist with a strong interest in the politics of financialisation in France. Her work has explored the multiple roles played by the state and its elites in the deployment of market finance in France, in the context of transatlantic and European exchanges. She has been a co-lead of the Université Paris 1 team for the Una Europa Self-Steering Committee in Europe and the World since 2021.

• Personal research interests

My work brings together insights from the political sociology of elites and government to investigate the politics of financialisation in France. I am currently involved in three research projects. The first, with Grégory Daho, explores the rise of financial and military elites in the French government, and its effects on policy-making processes. The second, with Rafaël Cos and Caroline Vincensini, looks at state/banks relations during the public management of the Great Financial Crisis in France. Finally, I am starting work on the first political history of securitisation markets in France.

• Key research themes

Political economy, markets, finance, government, elites.

History

Email François-Xavier

François-Xavier Nérard is an Associate Professor of History at Université Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne. He specialises in Soviet and twentieth-century European history. He is the director of a master’s programme in international relations (MRIAE).

• Personal research interests

My publications include an Historical Atlas of Russia (Autrement, 2024), a study of denunciations in USSR Cinq pour cent de vérité (Tallandier, 2004) and a book on victims’ commemorations in Europe, Commémorer les victimes en Europe, XVI-XXI siècles (Champ Vallon, 2011). I am also the author of several articles on Soviet social history of the 1920s and 1930s and on memory of the Stalinist terror and Soviet wars. My last project and forthcoming book (CNRS editions, 2025) is about taste and consumption in the USSR, and more precisely about collective catering and canteens in the USSR.

• Key research themes

Russia; Soviet Union; memory; food studies.

International Relations, European Union Studies

Email Sarah

Currently Professor in International Studies and Global Politics at Leiden University, and visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Sarah's research covers Europe and global IR, EU gender, migration and religious engagement policies, EU-Islam, EU-North Africa relations as well as European integration and crises such as Brexit and Covid-19 more broadly.

• Personal research interests
• Key research themes

History

Email Anne-Isabelle

Anne-Isabelle Richard is a historian of Europe and the world in the 20th century, with a particular emphasis on the interactions between Africa and Europe. Her research interests are European and world history from a transnational and trans-imperial perspective. Focusing on the concept of regions, she is particularly interested in the role of civil society and how ideas about alternatives to the nation state were negotiated in day-to-day practice from the late nineteenth century onward. Richard is co-editor-in-chief of the journal Itinerario (Cambridge University Press) and part of the editorial board of the Revue Monde(s) (Presses Universitaires de Rennes). She co-chairs the Humanities Advisory Table of the Dutch Research Council (NWO) and is the co-chair of the steering committee of the European Network in Universal and Global History (ENIUGH). Her work has been published in outlets such as The Journal of Global History, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, The European Review of History and contributed to the Cambridge History of the European Union. For a wider audience she co-edited Maps that Made History.

• Personal research interests

My research interests are at the intersection of global and European history, and privilege transnational and transimperial perspectives. My work argues for a global turn in European history and, equally, the incorporation of Europe in colonial and global history. I focus on ideas of imperial, regional and global construction and belonging from the late nineteenth century onward. I am particularly interested in the role of civil society actors and how ideas about alternatives to the nation state are negotiated in day-to-day practice. I am currently starting a new research project on universities, colonies, development aid and regions.

• Key research themes

Europe, colonialism, decolonisation, universities, global history.

History

Email William

William Mulligan is an historian ,with a particular interest in European history in the late 19th and early 20th century, particularly the First World War. William sees opportunities to bring different disciplines together in order to explain different trajectories and possibilities in Europe today.

• Personal research interests

I am currently writing a book on economic interdependence, great power politics, and the origins of the First World War. I examine how economic interdependence changed from acting as a constraint on great power war into a system of militarized interdependence. The book addresses wider questions about the relationship between economic interdependence, war and peace in international history.

• Key research themes

First World War, international history.

Law

Email Imelda

Imelda Maher is Sutherland Full Professor of European Law, Director of University College Dublin's Dublin European Institute, Senior Vice-President Royal Irish Academy (2023-), and former Dean of Law (2017-2021). She is also a member of the Royal Irish Academy, Honorary Bencher, Middle Temple London. Imelda researches on EU Law and Governance with a particular interest in competition law and the interface of national and EU Law.

• Personal research interests

My research interests are in EU Law and Governance and in competition law. Current projects include EU Law and Hope (commenced when the Senior Emile Noel Global Fellow at New York University School of Law); the implementation of EU Law in Irish courts (with Stephanie FitzPatrick and previously with Dr. Rónán Riordan, Barry Roger and Neža Šubic) and two small projects on law and language: one on the Europeanisation of the Irish language, and another on modern European languages in Irish law.

• Key research themes

EU Law and Governance, Competition Law, Law and Hope.

Chinese Studies, Contemporary History, Business History

Email Valeria

Valeria Zanier, PhD (Ca' Foscari) is Associate Professor at the Department of Modern Languages, Literatures and Cultures (LILEC) of the Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna. She is the Chair of Chinese Studies and teaches Chinese Language, History of East Asia, Chinese Literature and Society. Previously, she taught at Ca' Foscari, LSE and KU Leuven. Zanier studies China's role as a global player in the post-World War II period, especially tracing the evolution of trade networks, capitalist infrastructure and transnationally active commercial actors.

• Personal research interests

I am currently working on two projects:

1. Mapping available sources and relevant experiences of European citizens with Chinese/Sinophone roots. Whereas the term 'Chinese' directly refers to people coming from mainland China (since 1949 PRC), the word 'Sinophone' allows researchers to include a wider variety of origins and, most significantly, studying Sinophone peripheries (Taiwan and Hong Kong, for example) and Sinophone minorities as specific regional/cultural/political cases.
2. I am part of a collaborative project exploring business longevity as well as cross-border connections and transformations in industrial enterprises in East Central Europe and China soon after the end of WWII. The project aims to study what happens to economic entities when countries form blocks and/or get separated from one other for political reasons. The first objective is to integrate this investigation into the broader research on continuity vs. discontinuity in enterprises across historical divides. The second objective is to produce historical narratives of the ‘lives’ of economic organisations.

• Key research themes

China, Europe, transnational networks, business culture, business longevity.

European and International History

Email Giuliana

Giuliana Laschi is a full professor of Contemporary International History and European integration at the Forlì Campus of Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna, where the internationalist courses of the Department of Political and Social Sciences are offered. Since completing her PhD at the European University Institute, her research has primarily focused on the history of European integration, particularly on Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) and EU and the world. She has been part of the Una Europa Self-Steering Committee in Europe and the World since the beginning of Una Europa, and together with colleagues across the alliance, she worked on the creation of the Joint Bachelor in European Studies as the first academic coordinator for the Università di Bologna.

• Personal research interests

I have been dedicated to research in the European field since my doctoral years, with particular focus on the European integration process and the birth of the Economic Community. Initially, I mainly worked on reconstructing the origins of the CAP, a pioneering area of research aimed at understanding the history of European integration in its various forms. To understand the political, as well as economic and social, significance of the CAP, I conducted research in many archives, including the Central State Archive, the Historical Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the French counterparts, the Archive of the European Commission, Parliament, and Council, as well as the archives of trade unions and political parties.

I then shifted my focus to the more social aspects of the CAP, in which the farming family played a substantial role. To understand the weight of the international implications of the CAP, I moved on to study the Community's external relations from 1958 onward, particularly focusing on association and enlargement, Mediterranean policy, and neighborhood policy, with a special emphasis on relations with Israel and the complex crisis in Western Sahara. I am still working on enlargement, especially on the turning point of the 1990s.

• Key research themes

History of European Integration, Common Agricultural Policy, Enlargement, Community's external relations, Community's Policy.

History of Political Thought

Email Annalisa

Annalisa Furia is an Associate Professor of History of Political Thought at the Department of Cultural Heritage of Alma Mater Studiorum – Università di Bologna since 2019. Her research interests include the study of the political thought of the French Revolution (Sieyès), modern and contemporary doctrines of human rights, citizenship and security and feminist political thought (Martha C. Nussbaum, Joan C. Tronto). She has also studied foreign aid, migration intended as a res politica and, more recently, the history of the concept of solidarity in French political thought. Annalisa has been a Visiting Professor at the Universities of Brighton, Leeds and Aix-Marseille. She is currently the Director of the Master Course on "Human Rights, Migration, Intercultural Inclusion". Over the years, she has taken part as an expert and/or scientific coordinator in many European projects on human rights, migration and development.

• Personal research interests

I'm currently investigating the European history of the concept of solidarity intended as a "game changer" for the conceptualisation and institutionalisation of power. I want to reconstruct the intellectual roots and practices that have nurtured, at least since the XVIIth century, its development and progressive institutionalisation in European history and, in this light, my aim is to contextualise and analyse its contemporary, troubled predicament.

• Key research themes

European history of the concept of solidarity, Feminist theories and movements, Doctrines of Human Rights, Migration as a "res political".

Public International Law

Email Helmut

Helmut Aust is a Professor of Public and International Law at Freie Universität Berlin.

• Personal research interests

My research interests focus on public international law, in particular the use of force, state responsibility, human rights law, the relationship between international and domestic law, and cities as global actors.

• Key research themes

Public international law.

Political Science

Email Thomas

Thomas Rixen is Professor of International and Comparative Political Economy at the Otto Suhr Institute of Political Science, Freie Universität Berlin. His research interests and teaching are in (de-)globalisation, institutionalist theory and economic policies, in particular taxation and financial regulation. He is author of the monograph The Political Economy of International Tax Governance (2008) and co-editor (with Peter Dietsch) of Global Tax Governance. What’s wrong with it and how to fix it (ECPR Press, 2016) and Historical Institutionalism and International Relations: Explaining Institutional Development in World Politics (Oxford University Press, 2016 – with Lora Viola and Michael Zürn). He has, among others, published in European Journal of International Relations, FinanzArchiv, Journal of Common Market Studies, Regulation & Governance, Journal of Theoretical Politics, Journal of Political Philosophy, Review of International Organizations and Review of International Political Economy.

• Personal research interests
• Key research themes

Political Economy, International Taxation, Financial Regulation, Degrowth.

Political Science

Email Lisa

Lisa Van Hoof-Maurer has a background in political science with a focus on EU studies, particularly the role of member states in EU foreign and security policy and norm diffusion. Since 2021, she has moved into science management, and coordinate and oversee various projects. In her role in the Una Europa Self-Steering Committee in Europe and the World, I primarily manage the BAES and Interdisciplinary Doctoral Training Programme. Her experience in both research and teaching in the field of EU studies gives her a strong foundation for working at the intersection of academia and administration, hoping to facilitate collaboration and structure projects effectively.

• Personal research interests
• Key research themes

Political Science

Email Joel

Joel Hänninen (he/him) is a doctoral researcher in world politics (political science) at Helsingin yliopisto/Helsingfors universitet. His work concerns big tech, corporate social responsibility and critical theory. In addition, he is a part-time coordinator for Helsingin yliopisto/Helsingfors universitet's engagement in the Una Europa Self-Steering Committee in Europe and the World.

• Personal research interests

My prospective doctoral dissertation draws from global political economy, critical theory and corporate social responsibility. Alongside this, I am affiliated with a research project which studies institutional hybridity, and a research group "Ideas and Institutions", for scholars of political, institutional and social theory.

• Key research themes

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), political philosophy, critical theory.

Sociology

Email David

David Inglis is Professor of Sociology at Helsingin yliopisto/Helsingfors universitet, writing in the areas of social theory, historical sociology, and globalisation studies, as well as the study of wine. He holds degrees in sociology from the Universities of Cambridge and York. He writes in the areas of cultural sociology, historical sociology, and social theory. He has written and edited various books in these areas. He has founded two journals, Cultural Sociology and Dialogues in Sociology, both published by Sage. He represents Helsinki both within the Una Europa Self-Steering Committee in Europe and the World and the Una Europa Joint Bachelor in European Studies.

• Personal research interests

My current research concerns globalisation, cosmopolitanism, (de)civilising processes, Eurasia, and the sociological analysis of wine.

• Key research themes

Long-term history of civilizational entities, involving "Europe". and other world regions.

Social Anthropology

Email Peter

Peter Finke is an anthropologist specialising in Central Asia, with long-term research experience in Qazaqstan, Uzbekistan and Mongolia. An expert in economic anthropology and social transformations, he has conducted fieldwork in the region for almost 30 years and has followed people also in the course of migration movements across international borders and into Europe. Another research theme of his has been identity patterns among different ethnic groups in Central Asia and their changes in the course of national state-building projects and global migration patterns.

• Personal research interests
  
• Key research themes

Political Science

Email Natasza

Dr Natasza Styczyńska is an Assistant Professor at the Institute of European Studies at Uniwersytet Jagielloński w Krakowie. Her academic interests include party politics, nationalism, populism and Euroscepticism in Central and Eastern Europe and the Balkans. She leads the Uniwersytet Jagielloński team in Horizon Europe REGROUP Rebuilding Governance and Resilience out of the Pandemic research project. She is a director of studies for the Una Europa Joint Bachelor in European Studies (BAES) at Uniwersytet Jagielloński. She is also the coordinator of the CEEPUS Network entitled “Europea from the Visegrad and Balkan Perspective” and vice-chair of the Working Group of Social Sciences and Humanities operating within Coimbra Group. Previously, she participated in numerous research projects (Horizon 2020, Polish National Science Centre, UK Economic and Social Research Council, Jean Monnet Networks) and educational projects (Jean Monnet, Erasmus Plus Capacity Building, Visegrad Fund). Natasza has represented Uniwersytet Jagielloński in the Una Europa Self-Steering Committee in Europea and the World since the very beginning.

• Personal research interests

I am a political scientist and scholar of European Studies. I have significant experience leading scientific and educational projects and conducting qualitative research within multinational teams. Currently, I am leading the JUK team in Horizon Europe's project REGROUP, “Rebuilding Governance and Resilience out of the Pandemic” where we applied mini-public qualitative methodology to learn about the citizen's mistrust and attitudes to the future of the European project.

Previously, I was a researcher in the H2020 project POPREBEL "Populist Rebellion against Modernity in 21st-Century Eastern Europe: Neo-Traditionalism and Neo-Feudalism," where I led a task on populist Euroscepticism in Poland. I also conducted qualitative research in the H2020 "EU Differentiation, Dominance and Democracy" (EU3D) project, as well as in the "Democratic Control and Legitimisation in European Foreign Policy: The Case Study of EU Enlargement Policy and European Neighbourhood Policy" project, funded by the National Research Centre, Poland, where I conducted semi-structured interviews in Poland and Ireland. Working with colleagues from all over the EU, I was engaged in the 'Negotiating Brexit: National Governments, EU Institutions and the UK’ project, funded by the UK Economic and Social Research Council (2017-2020), where I was responsible for the Polish case.

My academic interests include transformation processes in Central and Eastern Europe, party politics, nationalism and the right-wing, populism, and Euroscepticism in the CEE region and the Balkans, as well as EU enlargement policy towards the Western Balkans. My doctoral thesis tackled the issues of European discourse of Polish political parties and Euroscepticism.

In my work, I combine academic teaching, research, and public outreach. I am very determined to get out of the academic bubble and work with NGOs and schools for better outreach. I have organised educational events, exhibitions, and seminars on sensitive issues such as migration or disinformation and fake news that were open to non-academic audiences (2017 – Images of Unseen, 2022 – WELCOME, 2023 - How to detect fake news training, just to name a few).

I have a strong record of project coordination and working with non-academic organisations. Before joining academia, I worked at the Warsaw-based think tank Institute of Eastern Studies. Since joining Jagiellonian University, I have been engaged in the coordination of academic networks (Coimbra Group, Una Europa Alliance, Europaeum, CEEPUS) and cooperation with non-academic partners (The Financial Times, Genschagen Foundation, EUradio, Villa Decius, American Consulate in Krakow, Italian Institute among other).

• Key research themes

EU enlargement, Party Politics, Euroscepticism, Populism, Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans.