New faculty at the EUI

The EUI welcomes seven full-time professors for the new academic year, arriving from six different countries.

Four will join the Department of Political and Social Sciences (SPS), while the Department of History and Civilization (HEC) will add two professors and one will join the Department of Law.

Sociology professor Hans-Peter Blossfeld has spent the past decade at Bamberg University. In 2010 he was awarded a €2.5 million grant by the European Research Council to examine how education affects people throughout their lives in different countries, a project he will continue at the EUI.

A former fellow at the EUI’s Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, Professor Hanspeter Kriesi has worked at the University of Zurich’s Political Science Department since 2002. He is currently exploring the European citizens’ level of satisfaction in their democracies, and also intends to launch a project focusing on recession while at the EUI.

Professor Diego Gambetta, author of ‘The Sicilian Mafia: The Business of Private Protection’ and ‘Codes of the Underworld: How Criminals Communicate’, joins the EUI from Nuffield College at Oxford University.

Completing the SPS faculty is Ulrich Krotz, who was previously a Jean Monnet Fellow at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies (RSCAS). While working at various institutions in the US he maintained a keen interest in Europe, examining the region’s integration and international standing, and will become a professor of international relations at the Institute and joint chair with the RSCAS.

The HEC department welcomes Laura Downs from the Center for Historical Studies in Paris and Lucy Riall from Birkbeck, University of London. Downs will become a Chair in Gender History of Europe in the World, an area of expertise she has developed during over 10 years in France.

Riall has written extensively on Italian history, most recently publishing ‘Risorgimento: The History of Italy from Napoleon to Nation State’, while she has worked more broadly on issues of state formation in Europe.

The Department of Law welcomes Nehal Bhuta from The New School in New York, where he was an assistant professor of international affairs. Bhuta has also advised Human Rights Watch on terrorism issues, and will collaborate with the HEC department in teaching the history of international law in addition to his other courses.

All seven professors will begin their new roles in September, taking on a number of PhD researchers and running classes and research projects.

(Text by Rosie Scammell)