The Badia years have witnessed the greater integration of the MWP into the EUI - physically, administratively and academically. This period has also coincided with incremental reforms to the MWP with regard to the selection process and the Academic Practice and Multidisciplinary Activities, which have been designed to involve Departments and the RSC more fully in the MWP and to respond better to the individual needs of Fellows. The Programme has never been more competitive and successful, as indicated by the increase in the number (from 42 to over 60) and diversity of Fellows (more or less equally balanced as to gender and from some 25-30 nationalities). There has been a continuing and steady growth in applications from around the world, with 94% of Fellows leaving the Programme with an academic position of some kind.
The Introduction details the aims and underlying philosophy of the MWP as a global, academic career orientated, multidisciplinary training programme and the changes made during the Badia years to further realize them. The Conclusion provides proposals for further improvements. The intervening sections show how the Programme has increased the pool of applicants, recruitment and global reach over this period, improved its academic practice and multidisciplinary training, and managed to successfully place almost all Fellows on completion of their period at the EUI. As the surveys reported in the text and in the appendices show, the MWP and the changes of the Badia years have been broadly welcomed by Fellows: where concerns have been raised, these have been explicitly addressed in the conclusion. Overall, the report stresses that the MWP’s on-going success rests on achieving a balance between the MWP’s identity as a distinctive Programme and its integration into the Departments and the EUI as a whole, to the mutual benefit of all concerned.
The Academic Careers Observatory (ACO) of the Max Weber Programme regularly carries out interviews with Max Weber Fellows on the experience of job searching and taking on a new position. These interviews and reports cover all four disciplines ‒ Law, Economics, History, and Social and Political Science ‒, and document their experiences of the job market in countries such as Italy, Greece, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Austria and the United States.
The information provided in the interviews enables ACO to learn about Fellows’ experiences, compare these experiences across countries and disciplines, and provide first-hand insight into different job markets: how to prepare for the job market, how to best complete the application, do a job talk or negotiate terms and conditions when offered a job.
Over the last year, the research project has expanded its goal: the ACO team is conducting follow-up interviews two years after the first, bringing the ACO web site up to date on the experience of Fellows. The aim is to investigate the difference between expected and real duties, current job responsibilities and future plans of the former Fellows involved.
Here is an excerpt from an interview with a former Fellow in SPS:
For the interview, I did mock interviews both with the ACS staff and with a couple of people that are familiar with the topic or the British system, or both. This was really helpful because it gave me the opportunity to test myself and to receive some feedback. One of the most important things is to smile and try to be relaxed. If you cannot answer something you can always convey that you will have something to say about this in a while: it is ok to say ‘let me think about this for a minute’ or ‘I haven’t thought about that before, let’s see here’ and I felt it was really fine – I got the feedback that I seemed confident but not over-confident and it was really important for them because it gave them the idea of a person that they would like to have as a colleague and not just a good candidate.
When it is a long term job, it is not just about them thinking about me as a potential colleague but also the other way round – this means I can ask things, I can try and be myself, as it has to be something that works for me as well. So being yourself works for both sides, even with insecurities that are not disruptive. It is important to not put on a big show, but present yourself as you are.
The Max Weber Programme is proud to announce the names of the 66 Max Weber Fellows who will be part of the Programme for the academic year 2017-18 (*). The success rate among applicants was 4.5%. Among the selected Fellows 53 percent are male and 47 percent are female, representing 32 different nationalities around the globe:
ANDERSSON, Per Fredrik (SPS)
BAGHERI, Saeed (LAW)
BARRADAS DE FREITAS, Raquel (LAW)
CAGLIOTI, Angelo (HEC)
CANFIELD, Matthew (LAW)
CARRIÓ CATALDI, Leonardo Ariel (HEC)
CASTELLANOS-JANKIEWICZ, Léon (LAW)
COMMAULT, Jeanne (ECO)
DAGEFOERDE, Mirjam (SPS)
DOTTI SANI, Giulia Maria (SPS)
DUNGY Madeleine Louise Lynch (HEC)
FOSCHI Matteo (ECO)
FOTIOU, Alexandra (ECO)
GADE, Tine (RSC)
GERRAND, Vivian (RSC)
GOREA, Denis (ECO)
GORYUNOV, Maxim (ECO)
HADJIYIANNI, Ioanna (LAW)
HENKE, Marina (SPS)
HOLLEY, Jared (HEC)
HOOFT (van), Paul Alexander (SPS)
HOSOKAWA, Naoko (RSC)
HUTKOVA, Karolina (HEC)
IAKOVIDIS, Iakovos (LAW)
IVANOVA, Veneta Todorova (HEC)
JENTSCH, Valentin (LAW)
KANTENGA, Kory (ECO)
KHAZANOV, Pavel (HEC)
KLEIDER, Hanna (SPS)
KULIC, Nevena (SPS)
LAGIOIA, Francesca (LAW)
LO IACONO, Sergio (SPS)
MARCUZZI, Stefano (RSC)
MARKWICA, Robin (RSC)
MAUCEC, Gregor (LAW)
MCDONOUGH, Paul (LAW)
MENON, Seetha (ECO)
MOLTENI, Francesco (ECO)
MORVILLO, Marta (LAW)
MOTYL, Katya (HEC)
MOUAWAD, Jamil (RSC)
PAPADIA, Andrea (RSC)
PETROV, Victor (HEC)
PRAM, Kym (ECO)
QUARANTA, Mario (SPS)
RANGONI, Bernardo (LAW)
RAUCHEGGER, Clara (LAW)
RENNWALD, Line (SPS)
SCALISE, Gemma (SPS)
SCHMITZ, Carolin (HEC)
SEURAT, Leila (RSC)
SINHA, Rajeshwari Mishka (HEC)
SMITH, Blake (HEC)
SOUSA DA CUNHA, Joao Rafael (RSC)
SUZUKI, Akisato (SPS
THIEBAUT, Cyrille Marie Agnès (SPS)
TRANTIDIS, Ari (SPS)
TRUCHLEWSKI, Zbigniew Grzegorz (SPS)
TSAKAS, Christos (HEC)
TURA, Giulia Maria (ECO)
VAN DEN EYNDE, Laura
WALLERMAN, Anna Elisabeth (LAW)
YILDIRIM, Aydin Baris (RC)
ZAWISZA, Tomasz (ECO)
ZHURAVLEVA, Tatyana (ECO)
(*) Please note that the list is subject to change up to September. Check the MWP website for updates.
The countdown for the call for applicants to the Max Weber Fellowships has started! It will be out on 17 July. It will be announced on the Max Weber Programme homepage. Please check the website for changes.
In the meantime watch what the Max Weber Programme offers to Fellows, described in the words of the people who make the Programme a truly unique postdoctoral experience.
The Max Weber Programme is proud to announce the eight Max Weber Lecturers who will be presenting the monthly lectures next year from October 2017 to May 2018 at the EUI:
Wednesday 11 October 2017 Wolfgang Schoen (Director, Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance) did Law and Economics studies at the University of Bonn, conferral of doctorate Bonn (1985), German Habilitation in civil law, commercial, corporate and tax law Bonn(1992), Professorship University of Bielefeld (1992-1996), Director of the Institute for Tax Law and of the Centre of European Commercial Law Bonn (1996-2002), Director and Scientific Member at the Max Planck Institute for Tax Law and Public Finance (formerly Max Planck Institute for Intellectual Property, Competition and Tax Law), Munich (since 2002), Honorary Professor for Civil, Commercial, Corporate and Tax Law, Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich (since 2002), Vice-President of the Max Planck Society (2008 to 2014), Vice President of the German Research Foundation (since 2014).
Wednesday 8 November 2017 Cecilia L. Ridgeway (Lucie Stern Professor, Sociology, Stanford University), is particularly interested in the role that social hierarchies in everyday social relations play in the larger processes of stratification and inequality in a society. Much of her research focuses on interpersonal status hierarchies, which are hierarchies of esteem and influence, and the significance of these hierarchies for inequalities based on gender, race, and social class. She recently served as the President of the American Sociological Association (2012-13).
Wednesday 13 December 2017 Arne Westad (S.T. Lee Professor of U.S.-Asia Relations, Harvard Kennedy School) is an expert on contemporary international history and on the eastern Asian region. Before coming to Harvard in 2015, Westad was School Professor of International History at the London School of Economics and Political Science (LSE). While at the LSE, he directed LSE IDEAS, a leading centre for international affairs, diplomacy and strategy. Professor Westad won the Bancroft Prize for The Global Cold War: Third World Interventions and the Making of Our Times. The book, which has been translated into fifteen languages, also won a number of other awards. Westad served as general editor for the three-volume Cambridge History of the Cold War, and is the author of the Penguin History of the World (now in its 6th edition). His most recent book, Restless Empire: China and the World since 1750, won the Asia Society’s book award for 2013. Professor Westad’s new book, The Cold War: A World History, will be published in 2017 by Basic Books in the United States and Penguin in the UK.
Wednesday 17 January 2018 Jan-Werner Mueller ( Professor, Department of Politics, Princeton University) studied at the Free University, Berlin, University College, London, St. Antony’s College, Oxford, and Princeton University. From 1996 until 2003 he was a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford; from 2003 until 2005 he was Fellow in Modern European Thought at the European Studies Centre, St. Antony’s College. Since 2005 he has been teaching in the Politics Department, Princeton University. Professor Müller is a co-founder of the European College of Liberal Arts (ECLA), Berlin, Germany’s first private, English-speaking liberal arts college, for which he served as founding research director. He maintains a strong interest in international teaching and research initiatives centered on the liberal arts. He is the author of Another Country: German Intellectuals, Unification and National Identity (Yale UP, 2000;Chinese translation), A Dangerous Mind: Carl Schmitt in Post-War European Thought (Yale UP, 2003;German, French, Japanese, Greek, and Chinese translations); he is also the editor of Memory and Power in Post-War Europe: Studies in the Presence of the Past, (Cambridge UP 2002) and German Ideologies since 1945: Studies in the Political Thought and Culture of the Bonn Republic (Palgrave 2003). His book Constitutional Patriotism was published by Princeton University Press in 2007 (Chinese, Serbian, Greek, Turkish, and Korean translations); an expanded and revised German edition was published by Suhrkamp in 2010.
Wednesday 14 February 2018 Dani Rodrik (Professor of International Political Economy, Harvard Kennedy School) has published widely in the areas of economic development, international economics, and political economy. His current research focuses on populism, industrialization and structural change in developing economies, and the interaction of ideas and interests in policy change. He is the recipient of the inaugural Albert O. Hirschman Prize of the Social Sciences Research Council and of the Leontief Award for Advancing the Frontiers of Economic Thought. His newest book is Straight Talk on Trade: Ideas for a Sane World Economy (2017, forthcoming). He is also the author of Economics Rules: The Rights and Wrongs of the Dismal Science (2015), The Globalization Paradox: Democracy and the Future of the World Economy (2011), and One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth (2007). He is currently the President-Elect of the International Economic Association.
Wednesday 14 March 2018 Rachel Kranton (Professor of Economics, Duke University) studies how institutions and the social setting affect economic outcomes. She develops theories of networks and has introduced identity into economic thinking. Her research contributes to many fields including microeconomics, economic development, and industrial organization. In Identity Economics, Rachel Kranton and collaborator George Akerlof, introduce a general framework to study social norms and identity in economics. In the economics of networks, Rachel Kranton develops formal models of strategic interaction in different economic settings. Her work draws on empirical findings and integrates new mathematical tools to uncover how network structures influence economic outcomes. Rachel Kranton has a long-standing interest in development economics and institutions. She focuses on the costs and benefits of networks and informal exchange, which is economic activity mediated by social relationships rather than markets.
Wednesday 18 April 2018 Alex Aleinikoff (Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility, The New School for Social Research, New York) has served as Director of the Zolberg Institute on Migration and Mobility since January 2017. He received a J.D. from the Yale Law School and a B.A. from Swarthmore College. Alex has written widely in the areas of immigration and refugee law and policy, transnational law, citizenship, race, and constitutional law. He is currently at work on a book tentatively titled, The Arc of Protection: Reforming the International Refugee Regime. His book Semblances of Sovereignty: The Constitution, the State, and American Citizenship was published by Harvard University Press in 2002. Alex is a co-author of leading legal casebooks on immigration law and forced migration. Before coming to The New School, Alex served as United Nations Deputy High Commissioner for Refugees (2010-15) and was a professor at Georgetown University Law Center, where he also served as dean and Executive Vice President of Georgetown University. He was co-chair of the Immigration Task Force for President Barack Obama’s transition team in 2008. From 1994 to 1997, he served as the general counsel, and then executive associate commissioner for programs, at the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS). Alex was inducted into the American Academy of Arts of Sciences in 2014.
Wednesday 16 May 2018 Debra Satz (Professor of Ethics in Society, Philosophy and Political Science, Stanford University). Prior to coming to Stanford in 1988, Dr. Satz taught at Swarthmore College. She also held fellowships at the Princeton University Center for Human Values and the Stanford Humanities Center. In 2002, she was the Marshall Weinberg Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan. Her research interests span social and political philosophy, philosophy of social science, philosophy of economics, feminist philosophy, the nature of the state's obligation to provide an education to its citizens, the relationship between markets and social altruism, global justice. She grew up in the Bronx and received her B.A. from the City College of New York. She received her PhD from MIT in 1987. She was President of the American Society for Political and Legal Philosophy (2013-2016)
The Max Weber Programme in collaboration with the EUI Academic Service and Departments is proud to introduce to its Fellows the EUI data Lab&Clinic. The EUI Lab&Clinic is committed to making your data ‘drilling’ a success.
The Lab offers classic statistical support through individual consulting, bring-your-own data events, leading edge workshops and pop-up methodological debates. It also experiments with new contents, new learning formats, new infrastructures, and new ways of teamwork. The goal of the Lab is to push ahead with, and test the limits of, data-driven social science. If you’d like to be part of this, if you need help with your project, or if you want to know more about what the Lab is doing, please visit their website for more information.
This year there were enough Max Weber Fellows keen to kick a football to make the backbone of two teams: The Inglorious Ballstars and the legendary Weberly Hills. Both teams reached the finals, the Weberly coming second after an epic match against the Communards and the Ballstars winning the trophy in spite of the titanic efforts of the Smash-IT team to stop them. Well done everyone; to consign their names to history here is the list!
A meeting on the (future) development of the Max Weber Society was organised during the latest MW Fellows’ June conference. On that occasion, easy communication via the newly created Facebook group (Max Weber Society) was favoured over the upgrade and time-consuming update of the MWF Society website. Ideas such as the possibility for alumni to be more involved in the organisation of the June Conference or the opportunity to organize regional alumni meetings outside of Florence were also discussed. The possibility and the necessity to formalize the Society in the form of an association was debated but no final decision was taken in light of the small number of fellows present during the meeting.
Like every year, the June Conference saw the reunion of old friends and the birth of new friendships and collaborations among the MW Fellows of different cohorts.
The pictures taken at the event are available on the Max Weber Programme Flickr Album
Chair: Rigo Mate (HEC) Introduction: Anna Triandafyllidou (RSC Professor)
Abstract: Across the globe, migrant domestic workers are unfree workers whose legal residency is contingent on their continued employment as a live-in worker with a designated sponsor.
This talk examined the politics of their indenture. Providing a macro and micro perspective, it began with a global overview of the incorporation of migrant domestic workers as indentured workers in key host countries in the Americas, Asia, Europe and the Middle East, explained the cultural logic that undergirds their indenture, and then described the conditions of domestic work in the ‘worst destination’ of the United Arab Emirates, where absconding is illegal and quitting one’s job requires a sponsor’s permission.
This talk interrogated various theoretical frameworks for thinking about contemporary unfreedoms – slavery, human trafficking and structural violence – and proposed the alternative concept of “indentured mobility,” which sees migration as simultaneously constituting of financial mobility from a life of poverty in the sending society but at the cost of servitude vis-à-vis a sponsoring employer in the receiving society.
The concept of indentured mobility foregrounds not only the severe structural constraints that limit the options of domestic workers but also their agentic negotiations for improving their work conditions and maximizing the possible gains in their state of unfreedom.
About the speaker Rhacel Salazar Parreñas is Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies at the University of Southern California. Previously, she was a tenure track faculty member at Brown University (Full), University of California-Davis (Associate to Full), and University of Wisconsin, Madison (Assistant).
Her areas of research include labor, migration, transnational feminism, economic sociology, gender and the family. Her earlier works examined the constitution of gender in women's migration and transnational household formations. Her more recent works focus on the intersections of human trafficking and labor migration and examine the experiences of "unfree" migrant workers, including migrant domestic workers in Dubai and Singapore and migrant sex workers in Tokyo. She analyzes how morals mediate the experience of unfree labor vis-a-vis the state, migrant community, and workplace, for example by examining how moral views on prostitution are negotiated by sex workers in the process of their labor migration or how the moral views of employers result in varying experiences for domestic workers who are outside the boundaries of legal protection.
Professor Parreñas has co-edited three anthologies and has written five monographs as well as numerous peer-reviewed articles. She has received research funding from the Ford Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation, and National Science Foundation, and fellowship invitations from the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University and the Institute for Advanced Study. Her work is translated into French, Spanish, Italian, German, Polish, Korean, and Japanese.
Chair: David Lebow (LAW) Introduction: Nehal Bhuta (EUI LAW Professor)
Abstract:
An intense preoccupation with numbers is sweeping the worlds of international and domestic governance, based on the idea that political decisions must be made on the basis of objective quantitative data.
The use of statistics in governance was fundamental to the emergence of the modern nation-state. With globalization, the scope of governance through quantification is growing even more.
The expansion in quantification parallels the growth of bureaucracy; it is clear that bureaucracy runs on numbers. Using examples from efforts to measure violence against women developed by the United Nations to assess the phenomenon globally.
This talk showed how bureaucracy and quantification complement each other. They work with a shared approach to knowledge production based on conceptions of objectivity, rationality, and specificity.
At the same time, the dependence of bureaucratic activity on quantification means that its work is shaped by the underlying cultural and interpretive work of quantification and its capacity to render the complex social world commensurable through classification and categorization.
The talk concluded by asking, based on this analysis, what are the prospects that bureaucracies can resist the current trend toward nationalistic, charismatic leadership?
About the speaker
Sally Engle Merry is Silver Professor of Anthropology at New York University.
She is also a Faculty Director of the Center for Human Rights and Global Justice at the New York University School of Law, and past president of the American Ethnological Society.
Her recent books include Colonizing Hawai‘i (Princeton, 2000), Human Rights and Gender Violence (Chicago, 2006), Gender Violence: A Cultural Perspective (Blackwell, 2009) and The Practice of Human Rights, (co-edited with Mark Goodale; Cambridge, 2007).
Her most recent book, The Seductions of Quantification: Measuring Human Rights, Gender Violence, and Sex Trafficking (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016) examines indicators as a technology of knowledge used for human rights monitoring and global governance.
She has co-edited two books on quantification, The Quiet Power of Indicators, with Kevin Davis and Benedict Kingsbury (Cambridge University Press, 2015) and A World of Indicators, with Richard Rottenburg, Song-Joon Park, and Johanna Mugler (Cambridge University Press 2015), 2015. She is the author or editor of fifteen books and special journal issues.
She received the Hurst Prize for Colonizing Hawai‘i in 2002, the Kalven Prize for scholarly contributions to sociolegal scholarship in 2007, and the J.I. Staley Prize for Human Rights and Gender Violence in 2010.
In 2013 she received an honorary degree from McGill School of Law and was the focus of an Author Colloquium at the Center for Interdisciplinary Research (ZIF) at the University of Bielefeld, Germany. She is an Honorary Professor at Australian National University.
Chair: Katalin Straner (HEC) Introduction: Richard Bellamy (Director of the Max Weber Programme)
Abstract
In much of the literature on corruption, politics is seen as the source of corruption. Identifying it as the thing that is being corrupted raises considerable difficulties, not least because of the intrinsically contestable nature of politics itself.
This lecture made the case for identifying corruption in relation to standards internal to politics and links disputes about the definition and analysis of corruption to recent work on realism in political theory.
About the speaker
Mark Philp has been Professor of History and Politics at the University of Warwick since 2013. Prior to this he was fellow and tutor in Politics at Oriel College, Oxford and was the founding Head of Department for the Department of Politics and International Relations at Oxford.
His research has focussed on the history of political thought, the social and cultural history of late 18th Century Britain, and contemporary political theory and political sociology.
Recent publications include Political Conduct (Harvard 2007); the Godwin Diary website: http://godwindiary.bodleian.ox.ac.uk; Reforming Political Ideas in Britain: Politics and Language in the shadow of the French Revolution (Cambridge, 2013); with Joanna Innes eds., Re-imagining Democracy in the Age of Revolutions: America, France, Britain, Ireland 1750-1850 (Oxford, 2013); and a range of essays on the cultural and intellectual history of London between 1789 and 1815, political corruption and accountability, realism in political theory, and ageing.
14 March 2017, 10:00-17-30
Badia, Sala del Capitolo
Organizers: Ines Berniell (ECO), Pablo Gracia (SPS), Steven Klein (SPS), Nevena Kulic (SPS)
Abstract:
Even as more and more countries make gender equality a goal of public policy, gender hierarchies persevere across a range of contexts and metrics.
What explains the persistence of gender inequalities? What are the mechanisms that reproduce these inequalities? What public policies and political approaches have the best ability to overcome gender hierarchy? Finally, how is gender (in)equality at the societal level linked to within-household inequalities? To what extent does gender inequality emerge within families? How much of it is a by-product of a wider societal system?
Bringing together the approaches of scholars in sociology, political theory, and economics, this day-long multidisciplinary workshop will feature innovative research that examines, from a variety of methodological and thematic perspectives, the persistence of gender inequality.
The workshop will feature three panels as well as two keynote speakers. Each panel will focus on a different aspect of gender inequality: (1) Social Policy and the Welfare State; (2) Labor Markets; and (3) Household Inequality.
Abstract:
Institutions play a key role in reducing uncertainty, supposedly contributing to more predictable behavioural patterns and leading to path-dependent developments in society, politics and the economy. Yet institutions evolve in dynamic and unexpected ways. While human action is constrained by the normative and institutional environment in which it unfolds, social actors largely shape and modify environmental factors, prompting institutional change. Nothing is static. The interaction between human action and the institutional environment (broadly stated, between agency and structure) generates change, diversity of outcomes and, quite frequently, if not always, unanticipated and/or unintended effects. Institutional theory tends to see these outcomes either as resulting from re-alignments in the strategic moves of rational actors or from an exogenous shock that disturbs existing institutional arrangements.
The workshop’s presentations emphasize that unintended consequences and the diversity of outcomes have origins in the adaptive behavioural capacity of social actors and the network-like structure of interactions. The behaviour of one agent affects the behaviour of another, and the resulting dynamics produce novel and powerful self-organizing patterns. The purpose of the workshop is to prompt a critical exploration of the complex processes by which institutions evolve from an interdisciplinary perspective which involves political science, political economy, law, legal and political theory and historiography.
Abstract:
Like the mythological Hydra, multilateral coalitions have many heads and the potential to be extremely effective. Unlike the Hydra, however, the coalition’s heads often go their own way, following their own strategy even when it is at odds with the overall goal of the coalition. Managing these coalitions is an extenuating and yet vital task in the fight against terrorism. The workshop aims to explore the formation of multilateral coalitions, the way they fight, the dilemmas and trade-offs they face and to identify best practices in coalition management. For instance, what lessons can be drawn from the multilateral operations against the Islamic State in Mosul? How can multilateral coalitions share the intelligence their partners possess without compromising that intelligence? How have the EU and NATO fared in its fight against terrorism? The workshop brings together academics and practitioners, with keynote speeches by Ambassador Alessandro Minuto-Rizzo, former Deputy Secretary General of NATO, and Prof. Olivier Roy
27 April (9:30-17:00)- 28 April (10:00-18:00) 2017
Badia, Emeroteca
Organizer: Alexandra Chadwick (HEC)
Abstract:
This two-day workshop is organised under the aegis of the European Hobbes Society and supported by the Max Weber Programme and the Department of History and Civilization.
The workshop provides the opportunity for in-depth discussion of new work on the philosophy of Thomas Hobbes. Papers will be pre-circulated to registered participants. An hour is allocated to the discussion of each paper, divided as follows:
Brief introduction from the author. It is assumed that those attending have read the paper in advance.
Abstract:
How can historical research on economies, economists, and economic policies enrich and reinvigorate the study of the mainstream of modern history, centred on the investigation of ethnicity, nationalism, and political history?
This workshop showcases the possible contributions that the study of 19th and 20th century “histories of capitalism” can bring to the field of modern US, European and world history. At the same time, presenters will also point to the contributions that the study of history of capitalism can contribute to current debates on oil, colonialism, and trade liberalization.
Presenters will draw on case studies to address issues that are also relevant to global history, as well as business history and transnational history. Some of the themes explored will include business networks, global development, property and expropriation, and relations between “centres” and “peripheries.”
Organizers: Jonathan Greenwood(HEC), Katalin Straner (HEC)
Abstract:
At the heart of every discipline is translation, the mediation between ideas fraught with problems due to discrepancies in language and interpretation. But how was this cognitive dissonance remedied in the modern world, a period that starts with the advent of print in 1450?
By treating translation in the broadest sense, this multidisciplinary workshop provides provisional answers to this thorny question by exploring the adaptation of European culture within the continent and the wider world.
Translation, a concept so rich, yet deeply problematic, compels a multivalent analytical methodology only possible with the aid of several disciplines from the social sciences and the humanities.
Among the topics to be explored in this workshop are the translation of science, law, politics and religion, as well as literature and art, from the sixteenth into the twenty-first centuries and from global, transregional, and transnational perspectives.
Organizers: Prof. Dorothee Bhole (SPS), MW Fellows Vera Scepanovic (SPS), Line Rennwald (SPS)
Abstract:
To judge by the headlines, the age of liberal economic integration is over. From the UK's decision to leave the EU to surprise re-nationalizations of key services in some of its new member states, from the US Republicans' demands for greater isolation to the protests against the Trans-Atlantic Trade and Investment Partnership on both sides of the Atlantic, the calls to protect national economic interest are making a grand comeback.
This workshop will explore the origins and consequences of this return of the nationalist discourse in economic policymaking. Championed mostly from the far right, the mix of appeals for greater economic autonomy, sovereignty from the transnational capital and social justice has raised a daunting challenge not only for liberals but also for the left. To what extent are these representative of broader political realignments? Which legal and political claims are being marshalled to legitimate certain interests over others? What are the forces and the coalitions that are behind the new turn to economic nationalism? And most importantly, to what extent have they actually challenged the current liberal regime governing the exchange of goods and capital?
The issues outlined above lie at the intersection of political science, economic sociology, and law, and to address them this workshop proposes to bring together researchers from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds. In addition to contributions dealing with the current wave of economic nationalism, we also welcome participants who can add a historical dimension to our understanding of this problem.
Organizers: Akisato Suzuki (SPS), Amuitz Garmendia Madariaga (SPS), Paul Bauer (SPS) under the initiative of the Quantitative Methods Working Group.
Abstract:
This workshop introduces the concept and practice of Bayesian statistical inference.
Bayesian statistics has gained more recognition than ever in the field of social sciences.
The workshop deals with the fundamental differences between Bayesian and more conventional, frequentist statistics and introduces the basic logic of Bayesian inference. It then focuses primarily on computational methods in Bayesian inference, which allow for a high level of flexibility in statistical modelling.
Participants learnt not only the concept of Bayesian statistics but also practice computational Bayesian inference in lab sessions using Stan implemented in R.
Why Developments in World Politics Place an Epistemic Challenge for Social Scientists
16 March 2017
Badia, Emeroteca
Abstract:
Modernization theory has postulated a strong relationship between socio-economic development and democratization. The pivotal work of Seymour Martin Lipset triggered decades of empirical research into the causes of development and democratization. Working within this epistemic framework a group of economists in the New Institutionalist Approach (NIE) sought to refine claims about the direction of causality in the relationship between socioeconomic development and democratic change. While the earlier literature argues that socioeconomic development leads to consolidated democratic systems, NIE’s claim is that good institutions with the observance of the rule of law promote economic growth, which is likely to trigger a path to democracy (most notably, Rodrik 2007 and Acemoglu and Robinson 2012 developing Douglass North’s theory). Recent developments cast a heavy shadow of doubt on these predictions. China’s authoritarian path to development, Turkey’s descent to one-party hegemony despite its notable economic growth, and the rise of authoritarianism and populism in parts of Europe are key indications of remarkable divergence and variety in institutional trajectories.
Drawing on his experience as a policy adviser and fieldwork in directing development projects in five Muslim-majority countries, Professor Hilton Root critiques this linear approach which has become a dominant trend in the social sciences. He also questions whether the key assumptions of the equilibrium models of the senior branch of economic analysis are the prudent way to describe political and economic developments. His book ‘Dynamics Among Nations’ (2013, MIT Press), provides an alternative framework for understanding how structures form and change over time. Instead of focusing on variables independently by ‘holding all things constant’, so that cause and effect could be determined, he argues human societies should be seen as complex systems made up of networks of interacting agents – families, ruling coalitions, governmental bureaucracies, markets, unions – that influence each other within the larger system. The behaviour of one agent affects the behaviour of another, and the resulting dynamics produce novel and powerful self-organizing behavioural patterns that change the system, and create a spiral of feedback loops and linked responses. No equilibrium exists in the sense that is commonly understood in economics. Social actors change their behaviour as the system evolves, and their adaptations cause changes in the system as well. The coevolution of behaviour, function, and structure constitutes the traits of a particular system, and in their interactions the actors form networks that are in constant flux.
With this alternative analytic framework for the study of institution building, governance, and economic policy reform, Root challenges New Institutionalism and modernization theory, and sheds light on the divergent trajectories of China, Turkey, and Korea.
About the speaker
Dr. Hilton Root is a policy specialist in international political economy and development, and a member of the faculty at the George Mason University Schar School of Policy and Government. His current research examines three related areas: (1) global power transition and the challenge of legitimacy; (2) the comparative and historical
Abstract:
Hobbes was by any standards a late developer: by his own account, his efforts to do 'Philosophy' did not begin till he was 47.
As might have been expected, though, he had attitudes and assumptions that developed earlier and that continuously shaped his philosophic efforts. A surprising amount can be deduced about these attitudes.
A biographical investigation illuminates the character of what he set out to achieve, and thus, at least to some extent, the strengths and weaknesses of the political ideas that he has given us. It enables us to see contrasts between his early thinking and that of most of his contemporaries, but also to see interesting continuities with the Aristotelian scholasticism he affected to despise. It is particularly informative on the relationship between deterministic science and his attempts to understand the passions. The result is a helpful perspective on the science of politics.
About the speaker
Alan Cromartie is Professor of the History of Political Thought at the University of Reading.
He is the author of 'Sir Matthew Hale: law, religion and natural philosophy' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) and 'The constitutionalist revolution: an essay on the history of England' (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), and the editor of 'A dialogue between a philosopher and a student, of the common laws of England' for the Clarendon Edition of the Works of Thomas Hobbes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005).
He was also the Director of the Leverhulme Trust Liberal Way of War Programme, for which he edited Liberal Wars: Anglo-American strategy, ideology and practice (Abingdon: Routledge, 2015).
Abstract:
This lecture first provides an account of the structure of translation commentary: one or more theoretical concepts concerning a translation (concepts that define its relative autonomy from the source text, the relation of correspondence that it establishes to that text, and the function that it performs) are usually linked to one or more discursive strategies, so that a strategy is seen as a practical realization of a concept.
This account is illustrated by concepts drawn from two influential twentieth-century theorists, Eugene Nida (“dynamic equivalence”) and Gideon Toury (“translation norms”), whose incomplete and somewhat inconsistent formulations point to underlying models of language and translation, either instrumental or hermeneutic. On the empiricist assumption that language is direct expression or reference, the instrumental model treats translation as the reproduction or transfer of an invariant which the source text contains or causes, typically described as its form, its meaning or its effect. On the materialist assumption that language is creation thickly mediated by linguistic and cultural determinants, the hermeneutic model treats translation as an interpretation of the source text whose form, meaning, and effect are seen as variable, subject to inevitable transformation during the translating process.
The lecture then deploys the account of translation commentary in a detailed analysis of Friedrich Schleiermacher’s lecture, “On the Different Methods of Translating” (1813), in which omissions and inconsistencies expose the limitations of his theoretical concepts and discursive strategies. Schleiermacher sets forth a hermeneutic understanding of translation, but it is preempted by a residual empiricism that detaches the interpretive act from its cultural and social context while privileging the values of a cultural elite in the service of Prussian nationalism.
The aim of the lecture is to argue that translation research and practice cannot advance until empiricist-based instrumentalism is replaced by an understanding of translation that is based on a more sophisticated version of the hermeneutic model. The version of that model presented here conceives of translation as an interpretive act that potentially initiates a mutual interrogation--of the source text and culture and of the translation and its cultural situation. This hermeneutic approach is illustrated through an analysis of Susan Bernofsky’s 2004 English translation of Schleiermacher’s lecture, in which she employs various Gallicisms in diction that point to the French genealogy of the German thinker’s concepts and put into question their nationalistic force.
About the speaker
Lawrence Venuti, professor of English at Temple University, is a translation theorist and historian as well as a translator from Italian, French, and Catalan. He is, most recently, the author of Translation Changes Everything: Theory and Practice (2013) as well as the editor of Teaching Translation: Programs, Courses, Pedagogies (2017). His latest translation is J. Rodolfo Wilcock’s collection of real and imaginary biographies, The Temple of Iconoclasts (2014).
Abstract:
The symposium gives JMU’s MA students in European Union Policy Studies an opportunity to present and discuss their own research with Max Weber Fellows and the wider EUI community in an academic setting. This year, the symposium discussed the past, present, and future of the EU through multidimensional perspectives including the economy, national/international security, and European/foreign affairs.
The symposium ended with a keynote lecture by Professor Stefano Bartolini, Peter Mair Chair in Comparative Politics in the Department of Political and Social Sciences at EUI titled 'The European Parliament: obstinate but obsolete?'
Stefano Bartolini, (1952) has been teaching at the University of Bologna (1976), the European University Institute (1979 and 2004), Florence (1985); Trieste (1990), Geneva (1991). He has directed the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at the EUI (2006). He is currently ‘Peter Mair’ Professor in Comparative Politics in the SPS department of the EUI, Florence. His research interests focus on Western European political development, comparative methodology, institutional analysis, European integration and empirical political theory. His most recent books include Restructuring Europe. Centre formation, system building and political structuring between the nation state and the EU (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2005); The Role of Parties in Twenty- First Century Politics. Responsive and Responsible (edited with Luciano Bardi and Alexander H. Trechsel, London, Routledge, 2015); The Political, forthcoming (2018).
Organizers:
Akisato Suzuki, Max Weber Programme at EUI, Akisato.Suzuki@EUI.eu
Trajche Panov, Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies at EUI, trajche.panov@eui.eu
Caterina Paolucci, James Madison University in Florence, paoluccx@jmu.edu
Organising Committee: Katarzyna Kryla-Cudna (MWF LAW), Akisato Suzuki (MWF SPS), Nevena Kulic (MWF SPS), Paul van Hooft (MWF SPS), Katalin Straner (MWF HEC), Evangelia (Lilian) Tsourdi (MWF LAW), Line Rennwald (MWF SPS), Maxim Goryunov (MWF ECO).
Abstract:
For decades the global order seemed engaged– with a few, though significant, exceptions – in a process of integration across every dimension (economic, political, social, and cultural) and on every level (global, inter-governmental, transnational, regional, national and local). Increasing diversity accompanied integration, leading to both stabilisation and destabilisation of societies. However, in recent years that transformation has slowed down sharply, and in some cases come to a halt. Instability and mounting challenges to the liberal order and approaches across every dimension and on every level have replaced what appeared to be a smooth, inevitable, and supposedly benign ‘progression’, challenging historical consciousness. The diversity championed by the liberal order over the past decades has likewise been met with resistance from those seeking to return to more traditional boundaries – whether national, religious, ethnic, gender, or cultural. Is this the onset of a new era, or just the latest, perhaps temporary, development in an ongoing, open-ended transformation of global societies over the past centuries that has been marked by alternating moments of change and reaction?
This multi-disciplinary conference seeked to answer these questions from a variety of social science and humanities perspectives (historical, political science and sociological, economic, and legal) and represented through the EUI’s six thematic groupings. The conference welcomed regular presentations, poster presentations or panel proposals related to those thematic research groups, as well as contributions that address other issues of academic and social relevance.
Read the description of individual sessions on the MWP Blog
The conference this year included three keynote lectures:
We are glad to receive and announce former and current MW Fellows’ publications. Due to restricted space this is but a selection of publications received in the last few months.
Mohamed-Ali Adraoui (SPS 2013-15), in July 2017, ‘Borders and Sovereignty in the Islamist and Jihadist Thought: Past and Present’, International Affairs, special issue (vol.93, n°4)
Shreya Atrey (LAW 2016-17), 'Redefining Frontiers of EU Discrimination Law' [2017] Public Law 185.
Sayaka Chatani (HEC 2014-15), ‘Between Rural Youth and Empire: Social and Emotional Dynamics of Youth Mobilization in the Countryside of Colonial Taiwan under Japan’s Total War,’ April 2017, The American Historical Review.
Maria Adele Carrai (LAW 2015-17), ‘Learning Western techniques of empire: Republican China and the new legal framework for managing Tibet,’ selected for publication in the Leiden Journal of International Law (forthcoming 2017).
Maria Adele Carrai (LAW 2015-17), ‘China’s Unilateral Abrogation of the Sino-Belgian Treaty: A Case Study of a Deviant
Transplantation,’ in Michael Ng and Zhao Yun ed, Chinese Legal Reform and the Global
Legal Order: Adoption and Adaptation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017).
Besir Ceka (SPS 2013-14) and Tobias Lenz (SPS 2015-16), (with Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks, Jeanine Bezuijen, Svet Derderyan) (2017): Measuring International Authority: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
Jörg Friedrichs (SPS 2006-07), ‘Sino-Muslim Relations: The Han, the Hui, and the Uyghurs’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Volume 37, 2017 - Issue 1,
tandfonline.com
Rasmus Hoffmann (SPS 2008-09),(with Hu Y, van Lenthe F, van Hedel K, Mackenbach JP) 2017. ‘Assessing the impact of natural policy experiments on socioeconomic inequalities in health: how to apply commonly used quantitative analytical methods?’ BMC Medical Research Methodology, 17:68.
Tobias Lenz (SPS 2015-16), (with Lora Viola (2017): ‘Legitimacy and Institutional Change in International Organizations: A Cognitive Approach’, in: Review of International Studies. Online first, doi: 10.1017/S0260210517000201.
Audrey Millet (HEC 2016-17), Le dessinateur de fabrique dans l’ombre de l’atelier (XVIIIe-XIXe siècle)’ in, Biens Symboliques / Symbolics Goods, n. is titled Artistes ordinaires : du paradoxe au paradigme ?, Presses Universitaires de Vincennes, October 2017
Audrey Millet (HEC 2016-17), ‘How to Draw Fashion? What the Gesture Says (18th-19th c.)?”, International Journal of Fashion Studies, June 2017, 4/2
Julija Sardelic (SPS 2014-16), ‘In and out from the European margins: reshuffling mobilities and legal statuses of Romani minorities between the Post-Yugoslav space and the European Union’, Social Identities, June 2017,
tandfonline.com
Jordi J. Teixidó (ECO 2015-16), Stefano F. Verde, ‘Is the Gasoline Tax Regressive in the Twenty-First Century? Taking Wealth into Account’, Ecological Economics, Volume 138, August 2017, Pages 109-125, ISSN 0921-8009,
doi.org
Inés Valdez (SPS 2011-12), ‘Punishment, Race, and the Organization of Immigration Exclusion.’ In Political Research Quarterly 69(4): 649-654
Leen Vandecasteele (SPS 2011-12), (with Reeskens, T. ),
‘Hard Times and European Youth. The Effect of Economic Insecurity on Human Values, Social Attitudes and Well-being’. Journal of Psychology. 52 (1)
Leen Vandecasteele (SPS 2011-12), ‘Economic Hardship and Well-Being: Examining the Relative Role of Individual Resources and Welfare State Effort in Resilience Against Economic Hardship’ Journal of Happiness Studies.18(1)
Eugenia Vella (ECO 2013-15) ‘The Government Wage Bill and Private Activity’ (with D. Bermperoglou and E. Pappa) , Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, forthcoming.
Rebecca Zhan (LAW 2010-11)),New Labour Laws in Old Member States: Trade Union Responses to European Enlargement, CUP 2017, cambridge.org
Maria Adele Carrai (LAW 2015-17), between September 2017 and 2018 will be a Postdoctoral Research Associate, China and the World Program, Princeton-Harvard University, USA and a Visiting Scholar, Fairbank Center, Harvard University, USA
Sayaka Chatani (HEC 2014-15), will move to a position as assistant professor in the Department of History, National University of Singapore, in August 2017.
Sophie Lemiere (RSC 2015-17), will be a Weatherhead Center at Harvard visiting fellow starting from 1 September 2017
Magdalena Malecka (LAW 2013-15), during the Spring semester 2018 will join the Institute for Advanced Study (Central European University) as a Junior Fellow .
Rigo Mate (HEC 2016-17) will move to a tenure-track appointment in Modern European History at Yale-NUS College in Singapore in September 2017
Jordi Teixido (RSC 2015-16) will move to the Universitat de Barcelona-School of Economics as part of the Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics from September 2017
Inés Valdez (SPS 2011-12) will be taking the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellowship at the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University for the academic year 2017-2018.
Mohamed-Ali Adraoui (SPS 2013-15),has been awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship for two years at the Edmund A.Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, followed by one year at the Center for International Studies at the London School of Economics.
Adele Carrai (LAW 2015-17) has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowships at KU Leuven for the years 2017-2020; she has been nominated for the Li Ka Shing Prizes and the Awards for Outstanding Research Postgraduate Student for 2015-16, HKU, Hong Kong
Aitana Guia (RSC 2015-16) was awarded the 2017 James F. Woodward Faculty Achievement Award by the Department of History at California State University, Fullerton for the journal article ‘Completing the Religious Transition? Muslims and Catholics Navigate Secularism in Democratic Spain’
Magdalena Malecka (LAW 2013-15), has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship for her research project 'Behaviour, knowledge, policy. The philosophy of science perspective on the applications of the behavioural sciences to policymaking'. The project will take place at Stanford University and the University of Helsinki during 2018-2020.
Veronika Pehe (HEC 2016-17) has been awarded a Marie Curie-Sklodowska Fellowship which she will take up in the Department of Late-/Post-Socialism at the Institute for Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences from 2018.
Anna-Isabelle Richard (HEC 2011-12) was awarded a 4 year grant by the the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO, €250.000) and started in February 2017 a new project on 'Eurafrica. African Perspectives 1918-1970s'. nwo.nl
Inés Valdez’s (SPS 2011-12) article ‘Punishment, Race, and the Organization of Immigration Exclusion’ was selected as the best article published in 2016 by Political Research Quarterly by the Western Political Science Association.
Alma – daughter of Anna Beckers (LAW 2015-16) and Herbert Khaler – was born on 14 February 2017.
Ash Haruka Fox – daughter of Sayaka Chatani (HEC 2014-15) – was born on 7 December 2016.
Jacques Michael – son of Steven Klein (SPS 2016-17) and Renée Melton Klein – was born on 30 November 2016, in Bagno a Ripoli, Italy.
Louisa – daughter of Leen Vandecasteele (SPS 2011-12) and Christian Brand – was born on 29 April 2017.
Olivier Arthur Afonso Richard-Picchi - son of Anne-Isabelle Richard (HEC 2011-12) and Alexandre Afonso (SPS 2011-12) - was born on 21st May 2017.
The MWP Newsletter is a platform for current and former Fellows to share their news and short articles about their academic experience. Please send them to valeria.pizzini@eui.eu
The Badia years have witnessed the greater integration of the MWP into the EUI - physically, administratively and academically. This period has also coincided with incremental reforms to the MWP with regard to the selection process and the Academic Practice and Multidisciplinary Activities, which have been designed to involve Departments and the RSC more fully in the MWP and to respond better to the individual needs of Fellows. The Programme has never been more competitive and successful, as indicated by the increase in the number (from 42 to over 60) and diversity of Fellows (more or less equally balanced as to gender and from some 25-30 nationalities). There has been a continuing and steady growth in applications from around the world, with 94% of Fellows leaving the Programme with an academic position of some kind. 
The Academic Careers Observatory (ACO) of the Max Weber Programme regularly carries out interviews with Max Weber Fellows on the experience of job searching and taking on a new position. These interviews and reports cover all four disciplines ‒ Law, Economics, History, and Social and Political Science ‒, and document their experiences of the job market in countries such as Italy, Greece, Sweden, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, Austria and the United States.
The Max Weber Programme is proud to announce the names of the 66 Max Weber Fellows who will be part of the Programme for the academic year 2017-18 (*). The success rate among applicants was 4.5%. Among the selected Fellows 53 percent are male and 47 percent are female, representing 32 different nationalities around the globe:
The countdown for the call for applicants to the Max Weber Fellowships has started! It will be out on 17 July. It will be announced on the 
Registration for the Programme will be on 4 September, followed by an intense programme of induction to the activities and offerings of the EUI. 
The Max Weber Programme is proud to announce the eight Max Weber Lecturers who will be presenting the monthly lectures next year from October 2017 to May 2018 at the EUI:
The Max Weber Programme in collaboration with the EUI Academic Service and Departments is proud to introduce to its Fellows the EUI data Lab&Clinic. The EUI Lab&Clinic is committed to making your data ‘drilling’ a success.
This year there were enough Max Weber Fellows keen to kick a football to make the backbone of two teams: The Inglorious Ballstars and the legendary Weberly Hills. Both teams reached the finals, the Weberly coming second after an epic match against the Communards and the Ballstars winning the trophy in spite of the titanic efforts of the Smash-IT team to stop them. Well done everyone; to consign their names to history here is the list!
A meeting on the (future) development of the Max Weber Society was organised during the latest MW Fellows’ June conference. On that occasion, easy communication via the newly created Facebook group (
Like every year, the June Conference saw the reunion of old friends and the birth of new friendships and collaborations among the MW Fellows of different cohorts. 
14 March 2017, 10:00-17-30
15 March 2017, 09:00-18:30
17 March 2017, 10:00-13:00
27 April (9:30-17:00)- 28 April (10:00-18:00) 2017
5 May 2017, 10:00-16:30
17 May 2017, 11:00-18:30
22-23 May 2017
5 June 2017, 9:30-17:30
Why Developments in World Politics Place an Epistemic Challenge for Social Scientists
27 April 2017, 17:00-19:00 
17 May 2017, 17:00-18:30 
7 April 2017, 10:00-18:00
7-9 June 2017
Mohamed-Ali Adraoui (SPS 2013-15), in July 2017, ‘Borders and Sovereignty in the Islamist and Jihadist Thought: Past and Present’, International Affairs, special issue (vol.93, n°4)
Shreya Atrey (LAW 2016-17), 'Redefining Frontiers of EU Discrimination Law' [2017] Public Law 185.
Maria Adele Carrai (LAW 2015-17), ‘China’s Unilateral Abrogation of the Sino-Belgian Treaty: A Case Study of a Deviant
Transplantation,’ in Michael Ng and Zhao Yun ed, Chinese Legal Reform and the Global
Legal Order: Adoption and Adaptation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017). 
Besir Ceka (SPS 2013-14) and Tobias Lenz (SPS 2015-16), (with Liesbet Hooghe, Gary Marks, Jeanine Bezuijen, Svet Derderyan) (2017): Measuring International Authority: A Postfunctionalist Theory of Governance. Oxford: Oxford University Press (forthcoming).
Jörg Friedrichs (SPS 2006-07), ‘Sino-Muslim Relations: The Han, the Hui, and the Uyghurs’, Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Volume 37, 2017 - Issue 1,
Rasmus Hoffmann (SPS 2008-09),(with Hu Y, van Lenthe F, van Hedel K, Mackenbach JP) 2017. ‘Assessing the impact of natural policy experiments on socioeconomic inequalities in health: how to apply commonly used quantitative analytical methods?’ BMC Medical Research Methodology, 17:68.
Tobias Lenz (SPS 2015-16), (with Lora Viola (2017): ‘Legitimacy and Institutional Change in International Organizations: A Cognitive Approach’, in: Review of International Studies. Online first, doi: 10.1017/S0260210517000201. 
Audrey Millet (HEC 2016-17), ‘How to Draw Fashion? What the Gesture Says (18th-19th c.)?”, International Journal of Fashion Studies, June 2017, 4/2 
Julija Sardelic (SPS 2014-16), ‘In and out from the European margins: reshuffling mobilities and legal statuses of Romani minorities between the Post-Yugoslav space and the European Union’, Social Identities, June 2017,
Jordi J. Teixidó (ECO 2015-16), Stefano F. Verde, ‘Is the Gasoline Tax Regressive in the Twenty-First Century? Taking Wealth into Account’, Ecological Economics, Volume 138, August 2017, Pages 109-125, ISSN 0921-8009,
Leen Vandecasteele (SPS 2011-12), (with Reeskens, T. ),
‘Hard Times and European Youth. The Effect of Economic Insecurity on Human Values, Social Attitudes and Well-being’. Journal of Psychology. 52 (1) 
Eugenia Vella (ECO 2013-15) ‘The Government Wage Bill and Private Activity’ (with D. Bermperoglou and E. Pappa) , Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, forthcoming. 
Rebecca Zhan (LAW 2010-11)),New Labour Laws in Old Member States: Trade Union Responses to European Enlargement, CUP 2017, 
Maria Adele Carrai (LAW 2015-17), between September 2017 and 2018 will be a Postdoctoral Research Associate, China and the World Program, Princeton-Harvard University, USA and a Visiting Scholar, Fairbank Center, Harvard University, USA 
Sayaka Chatani (HEC 2014-15), will move to a position as assistant professor in the Department of History, National University of Singapore, in August 2017. 
Sophie Lemiere (RSC 2015-17), will be a Weatherhead Center at Harvard visiting fellow starting from 1 September 2017
Magdalena Malecka (LAW 2013-15), during the Spring semester 2018 will join the Institute for Advanced Study (Central European University) as a Junior Fellow . 
Rigo Mate (HEC 2016-17) will move to a tenure-track appointment in Modern European History at Yale-NUS College in Singapore in September 2017
Jordi Teixido (RSC 2015-16) will move to the Universitat de Barcelona-School of Economics as part of the Department of Econometrics, Statistics and Applied Economics from September 2017
Inés Valdez (SPS 2011-12) will be taking the Laurance S. Rockefeller Visiting Faculty Fellowship at the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University for the academic year 2017-2018. 
Mohamed-Ali Adraoui (SPS 2013-15),has been awarded a Marie Curie Fellowship for two years at the Edmund A.Walsh School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University, followed by one year at the Center for International Studies at the London School of Economics.
Adele Carrai (LAW 2015-17) has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowships at KU Leuven for the years 2017-2020; she has been nominated for the Li Ka Shing Prizes and the Awards for Outstanding Research Postgraduate Student for 2015-16, HKU, Hong Kong
Giunia Valeria Gatta (SPS 2009-11) was awarded the Contemporary Political Theory Annual Prize for 2015 for her article "
Aitana Guia (RSC 2015-16) was awarded the 2017 James F. Woodward Faculty Achievement Award by the Department of History at California State University, Fullerton for the journal article ‘Completing the Religious Transition? Muslims and Catholics Navigate Secularism in Democratic Spain’
Magdalena Malecka (LAW 2013-15), has been awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellowship for her research project 'Behaviour, knowledge, policy. The philosophy of science perspective on the applications of the behavioural sciences to policymaking'. The project will take place at Stanford University and the University of Helsinki during 2018-2020.
Veronika Pehe (HEC 2016-17) has been awarded a Marie Curie-Sklodowska Fellowship which she will take up in the Department of Late-/Post-Socialism at the Institute for Contemporary History of the Czech Academy of Sciences from 2018.
Anna-Isabelle Richard (HEC 2011-12) was awarded a 4 year grant by the the Dutch National Science Foundation (NWO, €250.000) and started in February 2017 a new project on 'Eurafrica. African Perspectives 1918-1970s'. 
Inés Valdez’s (SPS 2011-12) article ‘Punishment, Race, and the Organization of Immigration Exclusion’ was selected as the best article published in 2016 by Political Research Quarterly by the Western Political Science Association.
Alma – daughter of Anna Beckers (LAW 2015-16) and Herbert Khaler – was born on 14 February 2017.
Ash Haruka Fox – daughter of Sayaka Chatani (HEC 2014-15) – was born on 7 December 2016.
Jacques Michael – son of Steven Klein (SPS 2016-17) and Renée Melton Klein – was born on 30 November 2016, in Bagno a Ripoli, Italy.
Louisa – daughter of Leen Vandecasteele (SPS 2011-12) and Christian Brand – was born on 29 April 2017.
Olivier Arthur Afonso Richard-Picchi - son of Anne-Isabelle Richard (HEC 2011-12) and Alexandre Afonso (SPS 2011-12) - was born on 21st May 2017.
