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About the Robert Schuman Centre

The Schuman Centre is a natural way of connecting brilliant academics who do cutting edge research to people in the public and private sectors who need to make forward looking decisions or solve those complex problems

Erik Jones

Director of the Robert Schuman Centre

The Robert Schuman Centre

The Robert Schuman Centre - which takes its name from Robert Schuman, one of the founding fathers of the European Communities - is an inter-disciplinary research centre at the heart of the European University Institute (EUI). It was established in 1992 to complement the four EUI disciplinary departments with the mission to be involved in both basic and policy research, collaborate with other centres of excellence in Europe and globally, provide opportunities for young scholars and promoting dialogue with the world of practice.

The goal of the Centre is to maintain an environment and support structure that fosters intellectual curiosity and excellent research. The research agenda of the Centre is currently guided by three major themes:

The Centre draws its income from a variety of sources, with around two thirds from externally funded grants. The Centre competes actively for prestigious research grants such as European Research Council and Marie Curie, and co-ordinates or participates in many Horizon 2020 projects. The Robert Schuman Centre is home to nine research programmes: the Global Governance Programme, the European Governance and Politics Programme, the Migration Policy Centre, the Florence School of Regulation, the Middle East Directions Programme, the Florence School of Banking and Finance, the Florence Competition Programme, the Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom and the Centre for Judicial Cooperation.

We host nearly 70 funded research projects, including four funded by the European Research Council, that span a wide range of topics.

The results of our research often become policy output in the form of publications and public events, where academics and policy-makers exchange knowledge and build solutions to face the challenges of our time.