Stephanie Anderson, Associate Professor of Political Science, Ph.D. University of Cambridge (UK), M.Sc., The London School of Economics, and B.S.F.S. at Georgetown University.  Her research focus is on the European Union (EU) as an international actor, international relations and security issues.
Dr. Anderson has worked at the University of Wyoming since 2004. In 2011-12, she was a senior fellow at the KFG – Transformative Power of Europe at the Free University of Berlin researching EU security policy, identity-formation, and crisis management as well as the scholar-in-residence at the EU Centre in Singapore.  In 2008, she published Crafting the EU Security Policy:  In the Pursuit of European Identity (Boulder, CO:  Lynne Rienner, 2008).  Her book is based on research she did while a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs (SWP).  Her first Fulbright was as a Senior Scholar in the Graduate School of International Studies at Sogang University in Seoul, Korea.  Her second book is co-authored with Rob Godby, The Economics and Politics of the Eurozone Crisis (Budrich, 2015).  She has also published in several journals and edited volumes including Armed Forces and Society, The SAGE Handbook of European Foreign Affairs, and European Foreign Affairs Review. 

Joyce Marie Mushaben is a Curators’ Professor of Comparative Politics and former Director of the Institute for Women's & Gender Studies (2002-2005). Fluent in German, her teaching centers on comparative public policy, the European Union, women's leadership, citizenship, immigration, mega-cities and sustainability issues. Her research covers new social movements, youth protest, German unification and identities, gender, ethnicity and welfare issues,  EU migration and integration studies.

     Her books/monographs include Identity without a Hinterland? Continuity and Change in National Consciousness in the German Democratic Republic, 1949-1989 (1993); From Post-War to Post-Wall Generations: Changing Attitudes towards the National Question and NATO in the Federal Republic of Germany (1998); The Changing Faces of Citizenship: Integration and Mobilization among Ethnic Minorities in Germany (2008); and, Gendering the European Union: New Responses to Old Democratic Deficits (co-edited  with Gabriele Abels, 2012). Her latest book focuses on Becoming Madam Chancellor: Angela Merkel and the Berlin Republic (forthcoming 2016). Her articles have appeared in World Politics, Polity, West European Politics, German Politics, German Politics & Society, the Journal of Peace Research, Democratization, Politics & Religion, Citizenship Studies, Journal of Ethnic & Migration Studies, German Law Review  and Femina Politica. A past president of the German Studies Association (USA), she has also served on the Executive Boards of the International Association for the Study of German Politics and the German Studies Association, as well as on  selection committees for Fulbright, the German Academic Exchange Service and  the American Council of  Learned Societies.  She is a current Editorial Board member for German Politics & Society, German Politics and Femina Politica.

Dr. Mushaben will be researching German Chancellor Angela Merkel

Cláudia Toriz Ramos is PhD in Political Studies (2005) by the University of Aberdeen, United Kingdom. She also holds an MPhil (1992) and a first degree in History (1986) by Universidade do Porto, Portugal.

She is Assistant Professor at Fernando Pessoa University, Porto, Portugal, where she teaches European Union Politics, Political Science, Globalisation and seminars on Democracy and Citizenship.

Her research interests cover European Union politics, especially from the perspective of European integration theories and the development of political institutions - society relations, in the context of democracies. She has been doing research on political participation, political identities and democratic legitimacy. She has an interest on structures of governance and democratisation within the various frameworks of multi-level governance.

Dr. Toriz Ramos will be researching former Prime Minister of Portugal, Maria de Lourdes Pentasilgo

Professor Sara Connolly has been working at UEA since 1993 and is a Professor in Personnel Economics.  

She is the UEA lead for the Eastern Academic Research Consortium (between UEA and the Universities of Essex and Kent - http://www.uea.ac.uk/research/our-research/easternarc) in the Quantitative Social Sciences.  Professor Connolly is Chair of the University Library Forum (2012-present) and holds a seat on the University Information Services Strategic Committee.  Until recently, she was Associate Dean for Learning and Teaching (2006 to 2012) and Associate Dean for Post Graduate Research Students (2008 to 2013) for the Faculty of Social Sciences.  

Dr. Connolly will be researching women in the European Commission

Hussein Kassim joined PSI as Professor in Politics in 2007. He hs been affiliated with the Centre for Competition Policy since 2005, was Co-Investigator for the second stage ESRC grant 2009-14, and is currently a member of the management board.

Before moving to UEA, Professor Kassim taught at Birkbeck, University of London (where he was Head of School 2006-2007), the University of Nottingham, and the University of Oxford, where he held College Lectureships at Balliol College, New College and Worcester College. He read Philosophy, Politics and Economics at New College, Oxford (1984-87), then at Nuffield College, Oxford, studied for an MPhil in Politics (1987-1989) and from 1990 a DPhil under the supervision of the late Vincent Wright.

Professor Kassim has held visiting positions at ARENA in the University of Oslo, Columbia University, New York University, the Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies at Harvard University, and the Centre d'Etudes Europeennes de Sciences Po, Paris, where he was Vincent Wright Chair 2015. He was appointed Visiting Professor at the College de Bruges in 2015. He is also Visiting Professor at Birkbeck, University of London.

In his research, Professor Kassim investigates EU institutions, the relationship between the EU and the member states, especially the UK and ‘Europe’, and EU policy in competition and aviation, on which topics he has published widely. He has been awarded grants by the British Academy, the Nuffield Foundation, and the ESRC, which funded 'The European Commission in Question', the main findings of which are presented in The European Commission of the Twenty-First Century, published by Oxford University Press in 2013.

Dr. Kassim will be researching women in the European Commission

Melanie Hoewer joined SPIRE in 2012. Before that she was teaching in the UCD School of Social Justice and in the Irish School of Ecumenics in TCD and she worked in a EU-Daphne funded project on Gender Violence and LGBT rights and on issues of conflict transformation, human rights and social justice for Amnesty International (Irish Section), the Latin American Solidarity Centre and the Friedrich Ebert Foundation (Mexico and Colombia). She is academic adviser to the Consultative Group of the Department of Foreign Affairs on the UNSCR 1325 Action Plan on women, peace and security in Ireland.

Melanie's primary areas of research are comparative ethno-national identity, conflict and settlement processes, gender equality and women's rights, Latin American politics and Northern Ireland. Her PhD thesis examined gender and identity in peace and conflict processes in Northern Ireland and Chiapas, Mexico. She has since written on intersecting boundary processes in the ethno-national conflict and settlement processes, gender identity and women's rights in Iran and Ireland, approaches to Gender Based Violence in Ireland and the status of women in Ireland.

Ben Tonra is Jean Monnet Professor ad personam of European Foreign, Security and Defence Policy and Associate Professor of International Relations at the UCD School of Politics and International Relations. In UCD he teaches, researchesand publishes in European foreign, security and defence policy, Irish foreignand security policy and International Relationstheory. From 2005 to 2010 he was Director of the Graduate School at the UCD College of Human Sciences. Outside the university Ben serves as chair of the Royal Irish Academy's Standing Committee on International Affairs and is the Project Leader for a research programme in EU security and defence policy at the Institute of International and European Affairs (IIEA), Dublin. From 1997-1999 he was a Lecturer at the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth and from 1993 to 1996 he was a Lecturer at the Department of Political Science, Trinity College Dublin (TCD). From 1989-1991 he was a Research Associate at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Washington DC. Professor Tonra was born in the United States, is a graduate of the University of Limerick (BA and MA) and completed his doctoral studies at TCD in 1996. 

Gretchen J. Van Dyke is an Associate Professor of Political Science at The University of Scranton, where she has taught International Relations and American Government since 1994. Following her undergraduate degree in Political Science at Trinity College, Washington, D.C. and three years working in the House of Representatives on Capitol Hill, Dr. Van Dyke completed both a M.A. and a Ph.D. in Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia. At UVA, she focused on the development of national security policy during the Kennedy Administration, within the broader context of broad theoretical questions about the national interest, presidential leadership, and foreign policy decision making.

Dr. Van Dyke will be researching current United States Ambassador to the United Nations, Samantha Power.

Silvia Francescon is the head of ECFR’s Rome Office.

Before joining ECFR, Silvia was deputy head of the G8-G20 Sherpa office at the Italian Prime Minister’s Office. She was in charge of co-ordinating the Prime Minister and Sherpa’s G8 and G20 policy dossiers and bilaterals.

Silvia also served the United Nations as Co-ordinator of the Millennium Campaign in Italy and is a former negotiator of international and European agreements for the Italian Ministry for the Environment.

Previously, Silvia worked at the OECD (Environment Directorate), the WTO (Legal Affairs Division), and the European Commission (DG Agriculture). She was also a research fellow in the International Law Departments of the Universities of Leiden (NL) and Ferrara (Italy).

Silvia holds a Masters in International Environmental Law from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS, London) and graduated cum laude in International Law at the University of Ferrara, where she was awarded of the title of “cultore della materia” in International Law.

Ms. Francescon will be researching former Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Emma Bonino

Founder and Director of the European Academy of Diplomacy and the Visegrad School of Political Studies in Warsaw, Poland
Since 2004 she has transformed a “start-up” institution into an international renowned diplomatic academy, with over 5000 Alumni coming from 40 countries. Throughout her career she has inspired and led change within a number of organizations, including the Community of Democracies and the Council of Europe.
In addition to her leadership and management experience Dr. Pisarska pursues a career in academia. She is an Assistant Professor at the Warsaw School of Economics, an Associate Scholar at the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington D.C and a Visiting Professor at the Azerbaijan Diplomatic Academy in Baku. She has also served as adviser to the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Polish Parliament, to the Office of National Security at the Chancellery of the President of the Republic of Poland; and continues to work as regular foreign affairs broadcaster in Polish and international media.
Previously, Dr. Pisarska was a Fulbright Visiting Fellow at Harvard University (2007), a Visiting Scholar at Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies (2010) and at the University of Oslo (2012). She is also a graduate of the University of Łódź (Poland), Warsaw School of Economics (Poland) and College of Europe in Bruges (Belgium).

Dr. Pisarska will be researching former Polish Prime Minister, Hannah Suchocka

Joaquín Roy (Lic. Law, University of Barcelona, 1966; Ph.D, Georgetown University, 1973), is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Director of University of Miami European Union Center and Co-Director of the Miami-Florida European Union Center of Excellence.

Dr. Roy has published over 200 academic articles and reviews, and he is the author, editor, or co-editor of 25 books, among them The Reconstruction of Central America: the Role of the European Community (North-South Center, 1991), The Ibero-American Space/ El Espacio Iberoamericano (U.Miami/University of Barcelona, 1996), Cuba, the U.S. and the Helms-Burton Doctrine: International Reactions (University of Florida Press, 2000), Las relaciones exteriores de la Unión Europea (México: UNAM, 2001), Retos de la integración regional: Europa y América (México: UNAM, 2003), La Unión Europea y el TLCAN (México: UNAM, 2004), The European Union and Regional Integration (Miami: EU Center, 2005), La Unión Europea y la integración regional (Buenos Aires: CARI/ U. Tres de Febrero, 2005), Towards the Completion of Europe (Miami: EU Center, 2006) and A Historical Dictionary of the European Union (Scarecrow Press / Rowman & Littlefield, 2006). He has also published over 1,300 columns and essays in newspapers and magazines. Among his awards is the Encomienda of the Order of Merit bestowed by King Juan Carlos of Spain.

Dr. Roy will be researching former Spanish Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ana de Palacio

Professor Ausma Cimdina s a prominent Latvian literary scholar and critic specializing in Latvian, Baltic, and East European literary relationships as well as Feminist Studies and Theory of Literature. She received her Ph.D. from the Latvian Academy of Sciences in 1992. She is currently the Dean of Faculty of Philology at the University of Latvia

Dr. Cimdina will be researching former President of Latvia, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga

Dr. Tuomas Forsberg is Professor of International Politics at the University of Tampere and adjunct professor at the University of Helsinki and University of Lapland. Previously he has worked at the University of Helsinki, at the George C. Marshall European Center for Security Studies, Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany and at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs. He gained his PhD at theUniversity of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1998.His research has dealt primarily with European security issues, focusing on ESDP, Germany, Russia and Northern Europe and he has published in journals including Co-operation and Conflict, European Security, Geopolitics, Journal of Peace Research, Political Science Quarterly, Review of International Studies and Security Dialogue.

Dr. Forsberg will be research former President of Finland, Tarja Halonen.

Eirikur Bergmann is Professor of Politics at Bifrost University in Iceland and Visiting Professor at the University of Ljubljana in Slovenia. He is furthermore Director of the Centre for European Studies in Iceland. 

Professor Bergmann writes mainly on Nationalism, Populism, European Integration, Icelandic Politics and on Participatory Democracy. Further afield his publication list also includes couple of novels published in Icelandic.

Much of his work, which has mostly been published in English and Icelandic – a few also in German, French and Russian – is found under the links above. Below you find selection of latest publications.

Dr. Bergmann will be researching former Prime Minister of Iceland, Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir

leanor E. Zeff is Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science and University Coordinator for Post-Graduate Opportunities at Drake University. She received the Levitt Mentor of the Year Award in 2006.

She participates on the Advisory Board of Annual Editions’ Comparative Politics, and is a member of the European Union Studies and International Studies Associations.

Dr. Zeff has publications on European Union politics, Developing Areas, and on African Politics, especially the Military in Politics. She has edited two books (with Ellen B. Pirro) on The European Union and the Member States and is now working on a 3rd Edition. She has written on "women and politics" and on Active Learning (SoTL) and the use of simulations for Teaching the EU. Her courses include Comparative Politics, Comparative Parliamentary Systems, Politics of Developing Areas, Transitions to Democracy, European Integration, Nationalism in Eastern Europe, Government and Politics in Europe, Model EU, and Immigration Policies in the US and Europe.

For several years, Dr. Zeff has accompanied students to the Midwest and SUNY Model European Union programs in Indiana, New York, Turkey and several European locations. Dr. Zeff works closely with students who want to apply to post-graduate scholarship programs, such as the Fulbright Program. Over 25 Drake students have received Fulbright Scholarships in recent years and others have been Truman and Rhodes finalists.

Dr. Zeff received her B.A. from Tufts University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from the Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research in New York City.

Dr. Zeff will be researching former US Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright