Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on comparative regional integration awarded to Leiden University
Leiden University is happy to announce that it has won a prestigious Jean Monnet grant for a Centre of Excellence. The Centre, called CompaRe, focusses on comparative regional integration.
How do different regions in Europe, Asia, Latin-America and Africa organize their regional collaboration? And what can be learn from these different regions to make the EU itself leaner, smarter and more legitimate?
To this end, CompaRe unites Leiden expertise on integration, with regional expertise on Africa, Asia and Latin-America into a centre on comparative regional integration. For the first time, leading experts on EU integration and regional studies from different faculties and institutes will engage in a structured collaboration. This enables systematic, comparative and multidisciplinary research and teaching on regional integration, with a particular EU focus. By doing so, the centre aims to elevate current research and teaching on regional integration and to help find innovative solutions to problems shared by regional organizations, including the EU. The centre focusses on three core questions:
1. What can the EU learn from other forms of regional integration, and vice versa?
2. How to reduce the sovereignty, democracy and administrative costs of effective integration (Smart, Lean and Legitimate Integration)?
3. How to manage the increasing proliferation and overlap of regional organizations?
CompaRe also brings together contacts with universities and regional institutions into a global network on regional integration, supporting research and teaching and enabling global dissemination to stakeholders and the public.
The application was spearheaded by Dr. Armin Cuyvers, the director of CompaRe. In this role, he can build on his expertise in EU law and his current role as director of the LEAC, which focuses on regional integration in Africa. In addition, CompaRe is proud to connect a broad and deep expertise on regional integration an regional studies within different faculties through the participation of Prof. Adriaan Bedner, Prof. Ton Dietz, Prof. Madeline Hosli, Prof. Luuk van Middelaar, Prof. Tom Ottervanger, Dr. Darinka Piqani, Dr. Jorrit Rijpma, Prof. Bernard Steunenberg, Prof. Christa Tobler, and Prof. Janine Ubink.
The team behind CompaRe looks forward to further enhancing Leiden’s contribution in this field, and to fruitful collaborations with our academic peers and regional stakeholders in the different regions.
For further inquiries please contact Dr. Armin Cuyvers.