After just two months at the EUI as a visiting student I can say this place is a great environment for pursuing a PhD! (the following observations are based on my experience within the SPS department)
The international environment coupled with the beautiful location, inspiring faculty and smart peers among the PhD students is definately making the EUI a unique place on the continent. The close ties between professors and PhD students and Post-doc fellows is another great feature that I have barely experienced elsewhere to this extend.

The compulsory courses offered are quiet common for PhD graduate programms. Beyond the those a wide array of electoral courses are offered that mirror the interests and diversity of the faculty. Furthermore the many workshops and lectures with dustinguished academics from outside the EUI form a platform of constant inspiration and exchange for young researchers.

Last but not least the EUI also tries to enhance the exchange with practioneers. Although in my perception there is still room for improvement on this issue. Through inviting more practioneers as fellows from different fields -not only EU institutions- such exchange could be further enhanced. Despite all the advantages, if you do not want to stay in academia or go to EU institutions in your professional career after the PhD the possibilities to build a network or gain from exchange with others during your studies at the EUI are rather slim. In the end the EUI largely remains an ivory tower. But definately the nicest one I have seen up till now.

However, socially the EUI also is a bubble. Even more so being situated outside the city of Florence on the hills of Fiesole and in a country with a language that most people arriving here cannot speak. Although the EUI offers italian courses and does everything it can as an institution to make the affiliates learn the language, this of course just works to some extend.

The "EUI bubble" is enhanced through the wide range of possibilities of leisure activities that are organized wuthin the EUI framework (not to mention the Bar Fiasko). From a gym to a chess club a lot of activities are offered. Just that this even enhances your social live also being attached to the institute.

Also this week I was able to participate in a methods workshop on qualitative comparative case studies by Professor Claudius Waageman from the Goethe Universuty of Frankfurt. It was held at the newly established Scuola Normale Superiore (SNS), a joint venture of the University of Bologna, Pisa and Florence, which establishes an integrated graduate school for the social sciences in Florence. The rooms at Palazzo Strozzi in the heart of the cities old town are breathtaking. Participating in the course I enjoyed the possibility to exchange views with PhD students from outside the EUI world.




Just yesterday the school (SNS) was officially inaugurated with a lot of tamtam, local politicians and academic celebreties. The inaugural lecture was held by Professor Sydney Tarrow from Cornell University. Safe to say, one of the grandfathers of social movement studies. His talk on the US as an "infrastructural state", which in his view is dominated by a security paradigm that grew out of the war-torn history of the country and is hollowing out important democratic principles was critical and at the same time very interesting. Although the evidence presented was mainly anecdotical and descriptive the narrative was quite convincing.

Long time no post. As you can imagine there is a reason. I have been rather busy with some conferences (ECPR Graduate conference in Innsbruck), a Summerschool (Comparative Authoritarianism in Oslo), teaching (Political Theory seminar at Humboldt University) and writing a reworked and extended dissertation prospectus on my PhD including a literature review.

I hope that I can soon make up for that and deliver some posts on those events and experiences. However the main point of this post is my stay at the European University Insitute (EUI) in Fiesole (just of Florence) that has just began a week ago. 

I am staying at the EUI until mid December as a visiting scholar at the Department for Social and Political Sciences and will primarily work with Donatella Della Porta on Diffusion effects among regimes during the Arab Uprisings and Ulrich Krotz on coordinated international effects on regime (in)stability and with Olivier Roy to get some insights on elite interviews and fieldwork in the Maghreb region. All three of them are based at the Robert Schumann Center for Advanced Studies.

The first week after my arrival was much about setting my self up and getting to know the people and the possibilities the EUI has to offer. Let me assure you there are loads. However as my primary aim dunring my limited time in Italy is to proceed with my dissertation and get two current work in progress papers to the next stage I have decided not to take too many courses or the like but to rather partcipate in selected courses and workshop and use the opportunity to present some of my current work in progress in some of the working groups here over the course of my stay. 

From my first impression the EUI seems like a great place for exactly that and I have already caught myself wishing I could stay longer. But as my fieldwork is up next in the beginning of the next year I will have to return to Berlin for at least a month before leaving yet again.

I will surely post more regularly during my stay at the EUI and report form the workshops and the academic environment on the over the next months. Exiting times are also ahead as I am going to visit my first conference in the US in november at the Middle Eastern Studies Association yearly gathering in november in Washington DC and I am invitied to the opening conference of the newly founded Center for Advanced Studies South Eastern Europe (CAS) in Berlin with the title:  "What makes New Forms of Authoritarianism so Attractive? Rethinking the Shades between Authoritarian and Democratic Rule" to speak on the topic of: Morocco as a role model for constitutional monarchy for the 21st century? (big questionmark). 

I will close with some another foto from the EUI campus to give you an idea of what the charme of this truly unique institution is all about.