Dr Wouter Wolfs and Mr Giovanni Lella each have been awarded a EPP Group Postgraduate Research Grant for 2021.
Dr Wouter Wolfs is a Lecturer and Senior Researcher at KU Leuven, specialising in research at the junction of the European Union, political finance, legislative studies and political parties. His research project will examine the contribution of the European People’s Party Group to the democratic infrastructure of the European Union, more specifically the development of the European electoral law, the rules on the statute and funding for European political parties, and the Spitzenkandidaten system. He will focus his archival research on the holdings of the Council of the EU and of the European Parliament, as well as on various documents related to the preparatory activities and intergovernmental conference in the run-up to the agreement on the Maastricht Treaty.
Giovanni Lella is a PhD student at the University of La Sapienza di Roma University and at Sorbonne Nouvelle University. His research will examine the contributions of the Group of the European People’s Party, and more generally of the transnational network of Christian Democratic parties, to the “second birth” of Europe as community in the 1980s. At the HAEU, he will focus his archival research on the holdings of the European Parliament, and on several private fonds including the archives of Altiero Spinelli and François Lamoureux.
The EPP Group Postgraduate Research Grant Programme targets researchers interested in the history, role and impact of Christian Democracy, and in particular of the EPP Group in the European Parliament, on decisive moments in the process of European integration. Grant recipients may use their award to consult primary sources held at the Historical Archives of the European Union in Florence, at the EPP Group’s archives in Brussels and/or at the Konrad Adenauer Stiftung (KAS) in Sankt Augustin - Bonn.