UM Star lectures 2018, including two lectures by FASoS staff members

On 2 February 2018, the UM Star lectures will take place for the fourth time. Through the UM Star Lectures, which take place in 13 cities and 4 countries at the same time, Maastricht University hopes to inspire its alumni by providing an opportunity to hear professors shed scientific light on topical issues.

FASoS staff members Kiran Patel and Esther Versluis will each give a lecture in respectively Berlin and Brussels.

The lecture series draws many hundreds of attendees each year – both recent graduates and older alumni – and sparks fascinating discussions that, along with a good measure of nostalgia and remarkable encounters, ensure the evening will be memorable. Students who might be interested in one of the topics, are also welcome.

For more information and registration, please visit the website of the UM Alumni Office.

Kiran Patel, Berlin

Algexit, Greenxit and Other Spectres: Lessons from History on Brexit’s Haunted Past

The United Kingdom is the first fully-fledged member state ever to decide to withdraw from the European Union. But it is not the first country to do so. Only five years after the Treaty of Rome, in 1962, Algeria took the same step as part of its assertion of independence from France. And in 1985 Greenland, an autonomous part of Denmark, left the European Community.

This presentation discusses the lessons that can be learned for Brexit from ‘Algexit’ of 1962 and ‘Greenxit’ of 1985, despite the obvious differences from today’s situation with the United Kingdom. Most importantly, it highlights the complex relationship between processes of integration and disintegration as a more permanent feature of the European integration process than existing research has had it.

Esther Versluis, Brussels

Europe in crisis? The EU as a crisis manager

Time and again the EU is confronted with complex policy problems and crises. Examples are the financial crisis, the refugee crisis, the outbreak of diseases such as Ebola, or the Brexit. Often the EU does not manage to respond to such situations timely and adequately. In this lecture, Prof. Versluis discusses why it is so difficult for a complex international organization to adequately deal with such crisis situations. She will illustrate that these types of ‘wicked problems’ can never be adequately tackled because the definition of the problem, and thus the proposed solution, will never be the same for different member states. We thus, Versluis argues, have to realize the necessity of a multi-speed Europe in order to be able to adequately regulate complex policy problems.

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