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.

On Decemeber 1st Mr Hamadi Jebali the former Tunisian prime minister gave a keynote speech at the campus of the Free University of Berlin.
The topic of the talk was an analysis of the current situation of Tunisia.
Unfortunately Mr Jebalis picture of the situation in Tunisia remained very superficial. On the contrary he went on at length about the international environment around Tunisia and the imminent dangers and problems connected with it. His sometimes involute speech (maybe this was also due to the translators) Mr Jebali painted a picture of Tunisia as an isle of democracy in the middle east that is endangered from all sides (geographically) and dimensions (political, economic, security). the notion of terror triangles situated close to Tunisian boarders was the highlight of this talk (see foto).

The whole story telling finally concluded in Mr Jebali teklling teh audience at the FU that Tunisia is in desperate need for support from Germany & Europe and it could not cope with the challenges it is facing without European support.

To be honest I would have preferred a keynote focussing on the primarily domestic issues and ongoing political developments in the post-revolutionary Tunisia. The challenges do not only lie at Tunisias boarders as implied by Mr Jebali but also in the very heart of Tunisias capital and its constitutional assembly. Three years after the ousting of the cleptocratic autocrat Ben-Ali Tunisia is still struggling to give itself a new jurisiticial foundation for its new polity. Alongside this long lasting process political violence against members of the non islamic political elite is growing. None of these challenges were sufficiently addressed in Jebalis speech.