The College of Europe, founded in 1949 and based in Bruges (Belgium) and Natolin (Poland), focuses on postgraduate European studies in the legal, economic, political, international relations and interdisciplinary domains, while also providing a range of tailor-made seminars and training courses targeted at executives and public sector officials.

UNU-CRIS is active as a research centre to foster an international community of scholars, and providing training and supervision for researchers working in the field of comparative regional integration. Since its establishment in 2001, UNU-CRIS has become a leading institution in policy-relevant research on regional integration, with a worldwide mandate and special emphasis on Africa, Asia and Latin America.

Researchers involved:

Luk Van Langenhove is Director of the Comparative Regional Integration Studies Programme of the United Nations University (UNU-CRIS) in Bruges. Since 2006 he is Vice-President of the International Social Sciences Council of UNESCO. He is one of the core researchers in EC Framework 6 projects SSH Futures (on the future of the social sciences and humanities in Europe)  and GARNET (on regionalism, regulation and global governance: the role of the EU) and is academic coordinator of the EC FP 7 project EU-GRASP (on the EU as a regional-global actor in peace and security) and member of the Advisory Boards of FP 7 projects MERCURY and EU4SEAS. He has published on regional integration in Europe and Africa, EU inter-regionalism, EU foreign policy.

Philippe De Lombaerde is Associate Director at UNU-CRIS in Bruges. He is also a Visiting Lecturer at the University of Bonn-ZEI and at the College of Europe. He has been involved in policy research and consultancy projects for the governments of Belgium, Flanders, France, Colombia and Thailand, the UN, ILO, OECD, European Commission, Eurasian Development Bank and EUROSTAT. Philippe De Lombaerde is an economist whose current research interests include: regional economic integration, monitoring tools and indicators, comparative regionalism, Latin American regionalism and EU external policy. He represents UNU-CRIS in OBREAL/EULARO, a network of scholars working on EU-Latin America relations, funded by the EC.

Francis Baert is Project Reseacher at UNU-CRIS and project manager of this Jean Monnet funded project.

One of Canada's leading universities, Dalhousie University is widely recognized for outstanding academic quality and teaching, and a broad range of educational and research opportunities. Located in Halifax, Nova Scotia since 1818, Dalhousie attracts students from around the world. We inspire students, faculty, staff, and graduates to make significant contributions to our region, Canada, and the world.

Researcher involved:

Finn Laursen holds the Canada Research Chair in European Union Studies at the Dalhousie Arts and Social Sciences Faculty and is Professor in the Department of Political Science. He received his university education at Aarhus University, Denmark and the University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, USA. In recent years his research has focussed upon European integration, especially the big decisions concerning the EU Treaties and their reform as well as successive enlargements of the EU and the role played by the EU in the global system. Finn Laursen has published extensively. He has authored and edited or co-edited about 20 books and published about 100 journal articles or book chapters. He is awarded with a Jean Monnet Chair ad personam.

The University of Pittsburgh is one of the oldest continuously chartered institutions of higher education in the United States. It has been placed in the top cluster of 7 leading U.S. public research universities and among the clusters comprising the overall top 26 research universities.

Researcher involved:

Alberta Sbragia is the Jean Monnet Chair ad personam and the Mark A. Nordenberg University Chair as well as the Director of the European Union Center of Excellence and the European Studies Center at the University of Pittsburgh (USA). She has been Chair of the European Union Studies Association in the United States, program co-chair of the Annual Meeting of the American Political Science Association, and Chair of the Conference Group of Italian Politics and Society. She serves on the editorial board of numerous scholarly journals (Journal of Common Market Studies, European Union Politics, etc). She is a member of the Advisory Boards of FP 6 CONNEX and FP 7 MERCURY projects.

Brunel University is a campus-based university situated in Uxbridge, West London, and is home to nearly 15,000 students from over 100 countries worldwide. Founded in 1966, our distinctive mission is to combine teaching and research excellence with the practical and entrepreneurial approach pioneered by its namesake, Isambard Kingdom Brunel.

Researcher involved:

Alex Warleigh-Lack is Professor of Politics and International Relations at Brunel University. He is Chair of UACES and together with Michelle Cini and Tanja Börzel, was Founding Editor of the UACES/Routledge book series, Contemporary European Studies. He is a member of the editorial boards of European Political Science and Politique Européenne. His main research interests lie in the reform of the EU and comparative regional integration/regionalisation, especially in Europe, North America (NAFTA) and Asia (ASEAN). Before entering academia, he was Chief of Staff to the Chair of the European Parliament Committee on the Environment, Consumer Protection and Public Health.

Established in 1853, the University of Melbourne is a public-spirited institution that makes distinctive contributions to society in research, teaching and knowledge transfer.

Researcher involved:

Philomena Murray is Associate Professor in the School of Social and Political Sciences and Director of the Contemporary Europe Research Centre, Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is Visiting Professor at the College of Europe, Bruges. She holds Australia’s only Jean Monnet Chair ad personam and is an Australian Research Council ‘expert of international standing’. She has directed and coordinated two successful Jean Monnet projects on regionalism in Europe and Asia. She is an expert on comparative regional integration in the Asia-Pacific (ASEAN, ASEAN Plus Three), EU-Asia relations and EU-Australia relations.