EURECON Team Members

Professor Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol – Principal Investigator

Dr Aleksandra Komornicka – Postdoctoral Researcher (Jan. 2021-August 2022)

Aleksandra is an international historian specialising in postwar Europe. Her research interests lie in the economic and business history, European Integration, Cold War and the history of the socialist regimes. She will defend her PhD dissertation in spring 2021 at the European University Institute. In her thesis, Aleksandra dealt with Poland’s increasing entanglement with Western Europe in the 1970s, paying particular attention to economic relations established between the socialist state and Western companies. Her research formed a part of the project PanEur1970s: Looking West: the European Socialist regimes facing pan-European cooperation and the European Community based at the European University Institute. Previously she gained an MA at the International History Department at the London School of Economics (2016), a BA in Cultural Studies (2015) and a BA in History (2014) at the University of Warsaw.

Aleksandra’s current project is entitled: ‘Business and Monetary Integration: European Debates in the Run-up to Maastricht, 1986-1992’. By investigating the Association for the Monetary Union of Europe, an organisation established by business leaders to promote first a common and later a single currency in Europe, she reconstructs the discussions preceding the introduction of the EMU in the business circles. Her research aims to shed light on different views concerning monetary integration present among European businesses and contextualise them within broader debates leading to the Maastricht Treaty.

Dr Aurélie Andry – Postdoctoral Researcher (Sep. 2018-Apr.2021)

Aurélie holds a PhD in history from the European University Institute in Florence, and is a former junior lecturer in postwar European history at the Université Paris-Sorbonne. Her main research interests include European integration history and the history of European socialism, the history of ‘social Europe’, EU social policy and the involvement of social actors in European governance and policy-making.

Aurélie’s research project entitled ‘Trade Unions and European economic integration: the battle for a ‘social union’ (1970s-1992)’ proposes to explore how European trade unions tried to influence European economic policymaking and to what extent they managed to weigh on European economic integration and on the creation of the Economic and Monetary Union (EMU). Looking in particular at the positions of the European Trade Union Confederation as well as the main French, Italian and British trade unions, and focusing on key moments of the European agenda, such as the 1974 Social Action Programme, the 1970s Tripartite Conferences, the project of directive for a reduction of working time at the end of the 1970s, the 1986 Single European Act, and the 1992 Maastricht Treaty. Her research aims to trace the trade unions’ evolving positions, internal disagreements, and the strategies they used to voice their concerns, and to weigh on decisions.

Dr Alexis Drach – Postdoctoral Researcher (Sept. 2017-August 2021)

Alexis holds a PhD in history from the European University Institute in Florence. His interests lie in the history of banking regulation and supervision, banks’ internationalisation, globalisation, and financial governance and expertise.

Alexis’ research project, entitled “Commercial Banks and European Banking Regulation: proponents or opponents? (1972-1992),” examines how British and French bankers reacted to European banking regulation proposals, from the 1972 banking directive proposal to the Maastricht Treaty. Based on archival material from the British Bankers’ Association, commercial banks and central banks, it particularly focusses on key moments of the European agenda, such as the 1977 and 1983 banking directives, the 1986 European Single Act, the 1989 directives, and the 1992 Maastricht Treaty.

Dorothea Todd – PhD Candidate

Dorothea is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow after finishing her Master’s degree in History from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. Her research interests include recent and modern European history as well as international history. For her Bachelor’s degree, Dorothea studied History and Political Science at Ludwig Maximilians University, and at the University of Edinburgh. During her studies, Dorothea took several internships, including one at the Representation of the Free State of Bavaria to the European Union in Brussels within its Department of the Bavarian State Ministry of Finance, Regional Development and Home, and another at the German Historical Institute in Washington, DC.

Dorothea’s research project “The Freiburg School and the Making of the Euro” (working title) aims to examine the influence of German ordo-liberalism on the development of the European Economic Community towards an Economic and Monetary Union. As part of the larger EURECON project, this Ph.D. focuses on the strand of intellectual history. By contextualising the Freiburg school with other European schools of thought and through archival research this thesis will study the spread of and reaction to ordo-liberalism in the context of the European Union.

Marvin Schnippering – PhD Candidate

Marvin is a PhD. Student in Economic and Social History at the University of Glasgow. He studied history, political sciences and sociology at the Ruhr-university Bochum and the NTNU Trondheim before his engagement in the EURECON project.

The main focus of his studies was the economic history of modern times. The main interests of Marvin’s studies have been the history of industrialisation, the rise and fall of the heavy industry, globalisation processes and the development of economic thinking. Marvin is especially interested in processes of economic change and their social impacts.

Marvin’s thesis regards the ‘Social Dimension’ of European integration under special consideration of the monetary integration. His objects of interest will be the British and German trade unions at the stage of the ETUC and their stance on the economic and monetary integration. The thesis raises the question which ideas of economic, monetary and social integration circulated in the trade union movement and in which way these notions were communicated. Marvin directs his attention to the questions if and to what extent the ‘Social Dimension’ of Europe was a completion of the monetary integration.

Dr Flavia Canestrini – Research Assistant (2023)

Dr Vincent Duchaussoy – Research Assistant (2017)

Dr Vincent Duchaussoy is an historian focusing on the history of central banks and international monetary cooperation. His main research concerns the process of regional integration in Europe and in Francophone Africa since the 1960s.

Dr Mechthild Roos – Research Assistant (2018)

Dr Mechthild Roos is a Lecturer in Comparative Politics at Augsburg University. She holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of Luxembourg (2018) and was a Jean Monnet Guest Scholar at Canterbury Christ Church University from March 2015 to November 2016. In her current research, she analyses the development of different EU countries’ health-care regulations with regard to refugees and asylum seekers. In addition, she studies in different research projects the institutional development of the European Parliament, the informal dimension of EU politics, the activism of EU supranational institutions, and the evolution of a common European social policy. Since September 2017, she has furthermore been involved in the global data collection project ‘Varieties of Democracy’ (V-Dem) as country coordinator for Luxembourg. Mechthild has been a member of the Steering Committee of HEIRS (the History of European Integration Research Society) from 2016 till 2018; and from September 2019 to September 2022, she is an elected member of the UACES Executive Committee. She worked as Research Assistant at the EURECON project from July to December 2018.

Dr Pavel Szobi – Research Assistant (2019-)

Pavel Szobi is a historian specializing in the history of 20th Century. He focuses on the period following the World War II, particularly dealing with the Eastern Bloc, COMECON and Czechoslovakia, as well as history of Iberian Peninsula. Szobi is a senior lecturer at the Institute of International Studies at the Charles University and a member of the project PanEur1970s: Looking West: the European Socialist regimes facing pan-European cooperation and the European Community, based at the European University Institute.

Dr Catherine Lefèvre – Research Assistant (2020-2021)

Catherine Lefèvre is a historian focusing on Cold War history, with a particular interest in the relationship of Western countries with Eastern Europe and Russia. Her current research is focused on the link between foreign policy and international finance. She holds a PhD in Economic and Social History (2020) and a Masters in Russian, Central and Eastern European studies from the University of Glasgow.

Catherine has been working as a research assistant on the EURECON project since January 2020 and teaches at the University of Glasgow’s Economic and Social History department.

EURECON is supported by an International Advisory Panel including:

Professor Harold James, Princeton UniversityHarold James is Claude and Lore Kelly Professor in European Studies. Professor of History and International Affairs. Director, Program in Contemporary European Politics and Society. He was educated at Cambridge University (Ph.D. in 1982) and was a Fellow of Peterhouse for eight years before coming to Princeton University in 1986. His books include a study of the interwar depression in Germany, The German Slump (1986); an analysis of the changing character of national identity in Germany, A German Identity 1770-1990 (1989) (both books are also available in German); and International Monetary Cooperation Since Bretton Woods (1996). He was also coauthor of a history of Deutsche Bank (1995), which won the Financial Times Global Business Book Award in 1996, and he wrote The Deutsche Bank and the Nazi Economic War Against the Jews (2001). His most recent works are The End of Globalization: Lessons from the Great Depression (2001), which is also available in Chinese, German, Greek, Japanese, Korean, and Spanish, and Europe Reborn: A History 1914-2000 (2003); The Roman Predicament: How the Rules of International Order Create the Politics of Empire (2006) and Family Capitalism: Wendels, Haniels and Falcks (2006; also available in German, Italian and Chinese). In 2004 he was awarded the Helmut Schmidt Prize for Economic History, and in 2005 the Ludwig Erhard Prize for writing about economics. He is also Marie Curie Visiting Professor at the European University Institute

Professor André Sapir, Université Libre de Bruxelles/Bruegel

André Sapir is University Professor at the Université libre de Bruxelles, Senior Fellow of Bruegel and Research Fellow of CEPR. He has taught at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the Graduate Institute in Geneva, the College of Europe in Bruges, and was visiting fellow at the IMF, the World Bank and the WTO. He worked 12 years at the European Commission, first as Economic Advisor to the Director-General for Economic and Financial Affairs (ECFIN), and then as Principal Economic Advisor to President Prodi. He has written extensively on European integration, international trade, and globalisation. He holds a PhD in Economics from the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore.

Professor Antoine Vauchez, CNRS/Paris Sorbonne

Antoine Vauchez is a CNRS Research Professor (Directeur de recherche) in political sociology and law at the Centre européen de sociologie et de science politique (Ehess – Université Paris 1-Sorbonne) and a Permanent Visiting professor at iCourts Research centre (Univ. of Copenhagen). After graduating in political science at Sciences Po Paris (1993) and in public law at the Université Paris 1-Sorbonne (1995), he has received a Ph.D at the European University Institute (Florence, 2000). Ever since, he has been a full-time researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique and a Research Professor (since 2010). His research engages with the field of historical sociology, political sociology and critical sociology of law and economics, researching extensively the interactions between forms of expertise, transnational knowledge communities and transnational politics with a particular emphasis on law, economics and European Union polity. He also focuses on issues connecting « law and politics », processes of « judicialization » and the transformation of Western States. His publications cover a variety of disciplinary fields including sociology (American Journal of Sociology, International Political Sociology, Berliner Journal für Soziologie, Sociological Review), political science (European Political Science Research, Journal of European Integration, Politix, Revue française de science politique, etc…) and law (European Law Journal, Law and Social Inquiry). Over the years, he has been a visiting scholar in a variety of universities : he has been a Post-doctoral fellow at the American Bar Foundation (Northwestern University, 2000), a Marie Curie Fellow at the Robert Schuman Center (EUI, 2007-2009), a Senior Emile Noël fellow at New York University (2014), and a Visiting professor in a variety of universities (Bocconi University, Copenhagen University, Columbia University, the Luiss in Rome, Cairo University and the International institute for the sociology of law in Spain).

Professor Amy Verdun, University of Victoria

Amy Verdun Professor of Political Science, Lansdowne Distinguished Fellow in European Integration and Jean Monnet Chair Ad Personam at the Department of Political Science of the University of Victoria, Canada. She has written extensively on issues related to European integration, global political economy, governance, integration theory, policy-making in particular economic and monetary integration as well as comparisons and relations of the EU and the rest of the world. She has published 21 books, more than 120 peer-reviewed articles and chapters. Her articles have come out in journals such as, Acta Politica; British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Canadian Public Administration, Comparative European Politics, European Political Science, European Union Politics, German Law Journal, International Studies Quarterly, JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Integration, Journal of European Public Policy, Journal of Public Policy, Politique Européenne, Regulation and Governance, Review of International Political Economy, Transfer: European Review of Labour and Research; West European Politics, and World Politics.

“This research has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement No. 716849)”

EC-H2020