Project Description

When the Jean Monnet project was created, 20 years ago, it was a pioneering project that greatly helped in fostering the studying and the teaching of European studies. Until the late '80s, anyone in the field could easily mention the who-was-who and who-was-doing-what in EU studies. The growing success of process of EU integration and of projects like the Jean Monnet one was such that EU-related studies have evolved dramatically both inside and outside the EU.

This exponential growth means that the who-is-who and who-does-what is today far more difficult to grasp, especially worldwide. A mapping and an assessing of EU studies is thus needed and the proposed project aims at doing that.

The project aims to map EU studies in the four disciplines (history, poli.sc., law, economics) outside the EU, thus following a pioneer attitude of the Jean Monnet program vis-a-vis thirds countries.

There is also another reason why we are applying for mapping EU studies only outside Europe, that is that we have already been working for the past two years on a mapping EU studies within the EU, the applicant and associate countries, thanks to the so-called SENT network, also lead by Rome Tor Vergata and bringing together 70 partner institutions.

In doing it, we however realized how any mapping work would not be significant without looking outside our European window. The grant received therefore allows for one of the most significant academic projects on EU studies of the last years to be successfully accomplished.

The comprehensive review of the evolution of EU studies over the last decades in the different disciplines that we will obtain will suggest which paths it would be most fruitful to undertake in the next years in European studies.

Likewise, it will suggest how to avoid that energies and means are spent on issues that are already studied (for instance in less known languages or in an another discipline). It will encourage scholars to include researches produced in other countries, especially when these works are originally published in a language other than English and are therefore less known to the wider public.

Our project also encourages trans and cross disciplinary studies, as well as cross country and cross continental fertilization. It shows the relevance of EU studies in core curricula outside Europe and hopefully push non-EU academic authorities in promoting it further. In addition, our project examines teaching methodologies and didactic approaches in teaching EU affairs in a view of promoting innovative ones around the world.

Results and Outputs

The most visible outputs of the proposed project will be the website, the conference and the books. The website will be set up at the beginning of the project and will be interlinked with SENT's one (http://www.sent-net.uniroma2.it/).

This will give it immediate visibility worldwide. The conference will take place in the spring 2010 in Barcelona, bringing together both the non European partners included in the proposed project and SENT partners (needless to say, the proposed project will exclusively finance the expenses related to the first ones...).

At the 3-days conference, each of the partner involved will present a report (paper) about the developments in their own geographical area and discipline(s). There will also be specific sessions devoted to didactics and teaching methodologies in EU studies. The papers presented at the conference will be published in a series of books by the prestigious Palgrave-McMillan publishing house. This will guarantee their worldwide distribution and promotion.

Impact

The project will greatly impact on the academic community, on policy makers and the general public, thanks to the debate it will generate, the interactive website and the books. Palgrave-MacMillan is one of the best publisher in the world not only for the quality of the volumes it publishes, but also for the capillary distribution of its products.

 Project co-financed by the European Commission - Jean Monnet Action