The Faculty Board has appointed Paul Stephenson as the new programme director of the MA European Studies and MA European Public Affairs.
Paul was previously the programme director for the MA European Studies in 2008-13. Paul will succeed current MA ES programme director Hylke Dijkstra and MA EPA director Christine Arnold on 1 September 2020.
Paul is “looking forward to this new appointment. It’s an honour to be given the opportunity to take on this double-hatted role, and to be entrusted with not one but two master’s programmes, which have proven so popular and successful over the last 15 years, and which have a very solid reputation in Brussels and beyond. I’m very grateful, of course, to my predecessors who have striven to ensure quality and innovation in the content and delivery of the programmes, most recently Hylke and Christine, who I have worked with closely.
It’s in some ways a rather intimidating prospect given the current circumstances where there is so much uncertainty. However, I am confident that with such committed colleagues coordinating and teaching the various modules, as well as administering the registration, scheduling, Marketing and Communications, and grades, that we’ll find a way forward together and manage to maintain the excellence that was recognised in the re-accreditation visit last December.
There are a number of challenges in terms of streamlining the delivery of certain courses across both programmes, looking for synergies in teaching, thinking how the integrated skills track and training for the thesis might be merged, as well as ensuring that as many students as possible get to benefit from the expertise and real-world insights from our practitioner guest lecturers.
We’ll need to ensure that our postgraduate courses in European Studies remain responsive to new policy developments in the field, relevant to the needs of the work place and resilient – able to cope with difficult and unforeseen circumstances. Resilience, flexibility, adaptiveness… more than ever such norms and values will also be crucial skills, together contributing to ‘employability’.”
