Alumni Genealogy

How it started

The Chairs' Genealogy project originated in the Department of Law, where colleagues began mapping the succession of chairs across the Department's various fields — from Private Law and Constitutional Law to EU Law and Legal Theory — tracing how individual professorships had evolved, split, merged, or given rise to entirely new areas of research over the decades. What began as an internal exercise to document the Department's own intellectual history quickly revealed itself as something far more valuable: a way of visualising, at a glance, how ideas, people, and disciplines are connected across generations of EUI scholarship. 

What it is

The Genealogy project is a series of visual, chair-by-chair maps tracing the succession of academic positions across the EUI's four founding departments — Economics, History and Civilisation, Law, and Political and Social Sciences — as well as the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. Each genealogy shows who held a given chair, when, and under what title, allowing the viewer to follow how a research area has shifted, specialised, or branched into new chairs over time. Some lines stretch back to the Institute's founding in 1976 and continue, unbroken, to the present day; others show how new fields — from Digital Society to Global and Colonial History — emerged from older traditions as the EUI's research agenda responded to a changing Europe.

Why it matters historically

Taken together, the genealogies offer a unique window onto the intellectual history of the EUI. They show, in a single glance, how the Institute's research priorities have evolved alongside European integration itself: the early chairs in Comparative Politics and Constitutional Law from the 1970s and 80s, the emergence of dedicated chairs in European Law and EU Governance as the Union deepened, and, more recently, new chairs addressing Digital Society, Climate Governance, and Global History. The project also preserves institutional memory that might otherwise be lost — the informal links between colleagues, the founding of centres and programmes, and the quiet continuities that connect today's EUI to its origins fifty years ago.

Why it is needed today

Beyond its historical value, the Genealogy project is a living tool, that gets updated yearly. It helps current and prospective researchers understand where a given field of study sits within the EUI's broader intellectual landscape, and how it has been shaped by those who came before. It supports the work of the Alumni Office in reconnecting former researchers with the chairs and departments that shaped their own academic trajectories, and it offers external partners and institutions a clear, visual account of the depth and continuity of the EUI's research strengths. As the Institute marks its 50th anniversary, the genealogies also serve as a fitting tribute to five decades of scholarship. 

A collaborative effort

The project gets developed since 2025 under the guidance of the Provost, Giacomo Calzolari, in close collaboration with the Development and External Relations Service (DEXT), including the Alumni Office, and academic colleagues across the Department of Political and Social Sciences, the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies, the Department of Law, the Department of Economics, and the Department of History and Civilisation. Their joint efforts makes it possible to bring together, for the first time, a comprehensive visual record of how research at the EUI has developed and evolved over half a century.