The Academic Practice Activities aim at improving Fellows’ competencies in areas essential for academic excellence and career development. These include workshops, courses stretching across a term or the entire academic year, writers’ groups, and one-on-one support. With the exception of the compulsory Draft Publication submission and participation in the September Presentations and accompanying feedback session, all Academic Practice Activities are optional. Fellows are encouraged to select the activities most relevant to their professional development goals and the skills they wish to strengthen. The activities are presented at the beginning of each academic year during an introductory meeting. Fellows are encouraged to discuss their Academic Practice plans with the MWP Teaching and Learning Officer, who can help them reflect on their career goals and profile and prioritise activities for their time in the Programme.
Academic Practice Activities
The Draft Publication is a compulsory element of the MWP. It is a way of ensuring that Fellows produce a piece of research of publishable quality that has benefited from feedback from both a substantive and formal (linguistic and presentational) point of view. Fellows are invited to view the requirement flexibly as an occasion to produce draft articles, book chapters, or working papers. The deadline for submission is 31 March 2027. In case of publications outside the EUI, Fellows are expected to inform the MWP Team. The MWP should also be credited within such publication. Fellows should publish on the EUI’s open-access repository Cadmus. Fellows are encouraged to submit information about recent publications to Cadmus and to the MWP Newsletter and are required to list the Draft Publication in their individual page of the MWP Annual Report.
Individual feedback on September Presentations provides an opportunity for one-on-one sessions with the MWP Teaching and Learning Officer. Alongside personalized feedback on academic presentation skills, these meetings provide a space to reflect on broader professional development goals and identify Academic Practice Activities and other opportunities that align with fellows’ development needs and career aspirations. Fellows are assigned a time slot to receive feedback.
The MWP Academic Job Skills Workshop Series provides structured, practical guidance on preparing competitive applications for academic positions. Across eight sessions, participants will develop key application materials—including the CV, cover letter, research statement, grant proposal, and teaching philosophy—and gain insight into academic interview processes.
The series is designed to be iterative and interactive: participants apply strategies between sessions and receive structured peer feedback on their documents at key stages. Disciplinary and national differences are addressed throughout, ensuring relevance for a diverse, international cohort applying across multiple academic systems.
Workshops take place on Monday mornings throughout October and November.
This conference, which takes place annually in February, sees the participation of EUI project managers, senior researchers, and professors, and explores how to put together a successful application for a Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellowship and an ERC grant. The conference is an occasion to get tips but also learn from successful (and unsuccessful) projects.
The MWP Certificate in Teaching & Learning in Higher Education is a practice‑based course designed to support Max Weber Fellows in developing effective, reflective, and evidence‑informed teaching practices in higher education. The Certificate introduces key concepts in learning theory, course and lesson design, assessment and feedback, inclusive teaching, and the pedagogical use of technology, with attention to a range of disciplinary and institutional contexts.
Through interactive seminars, design-focused activities, peer observation, and microteaching, participants are guided to articulate a personal philosophy of teaching and to apply principles of constructive alignment in the design of lessons, courses, and assessments. A central component of the Certificate is the Teaching Practice Week, during which participants gain supervised teaching experience at partner institutions and engage in structured peer and expert feedback.
The course emphasises reflective practice and professional development, supporting participants in building a teaching portfolio that evidences their pedagogical choices, teaching experience, and ongoing growth as teachers in higher education.
The Teaching Certificate and partner universities for the Teaching Practice Week are presented in October during the preparatory meeting. Classes take place on Wednesday mornings from October to late February (with a break over the winter holidays), followed by the Teaching Practice Week between March and May. The Teaching Portfolios are due in June.
Silent writing sessions are held from 9:30–12:30 on Friday mornings and provide protected, structured time for Fellows to work on their research writing alongside peers. The sessions include three 50-minute silent writing blocks, interspersed with breaks and brief check-ins on writing goals and progress. In addition to dedicated writing time, the sessions provide an opportunity to build community within the MW cohort and establish a shared culture of research writing, supported by the gentle accountability of working alongside other Fellows. Sessions begin in October and run weekly throughout the academic year.
Supportive peer feedback can be a powerful catalyst for productive, sustained research writing and publishing. Fellows are encouraged to join Writers’ Groups facilitated by the MWP Teaching and Learning Officer and other members of the Scholars’ Hub to obtain regular feedback from colleagues on draft articles and book chapters prior to submission. These groups also offer valuable practice in both giving and receiving feedback—an essential skill for engaging in the peer review processes that underpin scholarly publication. The groups are usually comprised of four Fellows who share a disciplinary basis and/or common research interests. The Programme provides meeting space, session facilitation, and logistical support. If you are interested in joining or forming a group, please contact the MWP Teaching and Learning Officer to get started.
Individual consultations provide the opportunity to receive one-on-one support from the MWP Teaching and Learning Officer or another member of the Scholars’ Hub team. These sessions can be used to explore career development goals, look over your application materials, revise grant proposals, practice ‘dry runs’ of conference presentations and job talks, prepare for interviews, discuss research writing in progress, or address other academic and professional communication needs. It is also possible to arrange teaching observations and feedback reports.
All written work (articles, book reviews, book chapters etc.) for which Fellows would like revision/editing should be sent directly to the editor Alyson Price (Alyson.Price@ext.eui.eu). Meetings to discuss work may follow.
Max Weber Teaching Module Certificate
The MWP Teaching Certificate is a valuable addition to Fellows’ academic profile and is worth 3 points in the European Credit Transfer System (ECTS).
The aim is to enhance Fellows’ teaching skills and increase their international mobility through a series of hands-on workshops and an intensive teaching practice week at top European universities. The host universities are presented every October.
Fellows who decide to obtain the MWP Teaching Certificate must have successfully completed the prescribed academic practice activities organized by the MWP.
"The support and experience I received [...] at the European University Institute’s Max Weber Teaching Training in 2013–2014 shaped my pedagogy for years to come." by Phillip M. Ayoub (MW Fellow, SPS 2013-2014) in Ayoub, P. (2021). Reverse Research Design: Research Design in the Undergraduate Classroom. PS: Political Science & Politics, 1-5.
"At the end of the teaching certificate, I really enjoyed giving guest lectures at UPF in Barcelona, where I also set up other presentations and meetings, which served as great networking opportunities. My main takeaway from the certificate is that, when I design courses, my focus should be on learning, rather than on teaching. This shift in perspective towards the students has allowed me to better choose the course learning objectives, add more formative exercises, and select the most appropriate evaluation format” words by Victoria Finn (MW Fellow, RSCAS, AY 2021-2022 and 2022-2023)"
At the EUI
All Fellows have the opportunity to be involved in teaching and mentoring in their respective departments.
Fellows who have been awarded a two-year Fellowship are primarily affiliated with the Max Weber Programme in the first year and follow more or less the same programme as the one-year Fellows. However, the job search is postponed to the second year and the Teaching Module is expanded over the two years.
In the second year, the Fellows are primarily affiliated with a Department, where they further develop their training in research and teaching. The Fellow is expected to teach and mentor PhD students in the department for no more than a total of 30 hours over the 2 years.
Second-year Fellows also maintain their affiliation with the Max Weber Programme and are expected to participate in its multidisciplinary research activities.
In the Florence area
The Florence area hosts a number of undergraduate and graduate programmes at campuses of foreign universities, creating opportunities to gain teaching experience in an international environment.
In particular the Master in European Union Policy Studies of James Madison University in Florence guarantees priority in the selection process to Max Weber Fellows with competences in line with its teaching needs.