The IES is pleased to announce the appointment of Dr. Jamal Shahin as the new Director of its Advanced Master in European Integration (‘EuroMaster’) programme. Dr. Shahin works part time at the IES, as well as in the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam. Jamal is trained as a political scientist, with a PhD from the University of Hull (2005). His research interests focus on global internet governance, political participation in the European Union, EU governance, and the impact of the internet on policy making. In the EuroMaster programme, he teaches the Research Methods Lab course and will be convening the core module on Policymaking and Interest Representation in the EU, as a successor to Prof. Irina Tanasescu. Jamal is looking forward to support all the students and colleagues who are part of the programme!

The public defence of the PhD in Law by Max Jansson will take place on Saturday 24 August 2019 at 11:15 CET. This is a joint PhD with the University of Turku. After an internal defense at the IES, the public defense will take place in Turku. The title of the PhD manuscript is "Value Reconciliation in Trade Law in Light of Criteria on Process and Production Methods – A Comparative study on the EU, the U.S. and the WTO". The Opponent in the public defense will be Prof. Dr. Gareth Davies from Tilburg University. The promoters of the thesis are Prof. Dr. Harri Kalimo (IES-VUB) and Prof. Dr. Tuomas Mylly (University of Turku).

The Institute for European Studies and Vesalius College are jointly looking for two new enthusiastic colleagues, one to work within the Marketing and Recruitment team, and the second one to be working for the accounting of both the IES and Vesalius College. The deadline for applications is 09/08/2019. 

The PARENT project's final conference took place in Brussels on 4 and 5 June, 2019. It brought together political actors, researchers and civil society organisations concerned with energy and sustainability in Brussels. Over two days, the conference discussed the project's core themes: sustainability, collaboration and technology. This was done in a collaborative and interactive environment amongst the 90 participants, with workshops organised by various partners, information stands from seven different organisations across Brussels, and an evening session with a keynote speech from Chris Roorda. As a result of the project, several mapping initiatives have been launched, with the ambition to fill the gaps in knowledge on sustainability actions in the region. The dialogue set up amongst actors will continue in the future, as we continue to push for a more sustainable Brussels.

The EUTOPIA alliance of six European universities, one of which is Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), has been chosen by the European Commission as one of the seventeen pilot projects for developing a ‘European university’, thereby  receiving a 5 million EUR grant from the Erasmus+ ‘European Universities’ programme.