Director's Welcome

The Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies’ mission is to produce the highest quality research  in the social sciences on contemporary Europe and to provide a platform for policy-oriented contributions to public debate.

The work of the Centre revolves around a a number of core themes :

• European Institutions, Governance, and Democracy
• Migration
• Economic and Monetary Policy
• Competition Policy and Market Regulation
• Energy Policy
• International and Transnational Relations of the EU.

We run programmes that examine the particular relationships between Europeans and their partners and neighbours, especially our Transatlantic Relations Programme and Mediterranean Programme. The Pierre Werner Chair Programme examines monetary integration.

Recent initiatives include the launching of the Migration Policy Centre; the enlargement of the Florence School of Regulation (FSR) to cover the field of Communication and Media; the Loyola de Palacio Chair in Energy Policy;  the European Democracy Observatory (EUDO); and the European Development Report.

We keep a watching brief on other issues or fields through specialised working groups and activities.

Our academic staff are responsible for our programmes and projects, in collaboration with colleagues in research institutions and universities elsewhere and involving contributions from several social science disciplines.

Our postdoctoral fellowships and visitor programmes are one of our distinctive strengths. Each year we host over 30 scholars as Fellows-in-Residence , especially young post docs starting out on their academic careers, enabling them to develop networks of longer-term collaboration.

The Centre’s fields of expertise and close connections to both European and national policy communities allow us to contribute to debate on policy and practice and to bridge between scholarship and practice in a contemporary Europe characterized by processes of change, questioning and debate.

Prof. Stefano Bartolini, Director of the RSCAS