A key priority of The Europe Center is to provide Stanford’s undergraduate student community with opportunities to develop a deep understanding of contemporary European society and affairs.  By promoting knowledge about the opportunities and challenges facing one of the world’s most economically and politically integrated regions, the Center strives to equip our future leaders with the tools necessary to tackle complex problems related to governance and economic interdependence both in Europe and in the world more broadly.

 

To this end, the Center recently spearheaded a new initiative, The Europe Center Undergraduate Internship Program in Europe.  The Center is sponsoring four undergraduate student internships with leading think tanks and international organizations in Europe in Summer 2014.  Laura Conigliaro (International Relations, 2015) will join the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), where she will work on a policy-related research project.  Additionally, Elsa Brown (Political Science, 2015), Noah Garcia (BA International Relations and MA Public Policy, 2015), and Jana Persky (Public Policy, 2016) will be joining Bruegel, a leading European think tank, where they will work on public policy briefs for the new European Union Commission that will take office in Fall 2014.  The Center is actively seeking to develop ties with business, governmental, and non-governmental organizations in Europe that can participate in The Europe Center Undergraduate Internship Program in future years.

 

 

On May 9, 2014 and May 10, 2014, The Europe Center hosted the Fourth Annual Workshop on Comparative Approaches to the Study of Immigration, Ethnicity, and Religion.  Speakers drew from a range of national and international universities.  Some of the papers presented included:

 

“Does Naturalization Foster the Political Integration of Immigrants?  Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design in Switzerland,” Jens Hainmueller (Stanford) & Dominik Hangartner (LSE).

 

“The Rhetoric of Closed Borders:  Quotas, Lax Enforcement and Illegal Migration,” Giovanni Facchini (Nottingham) & Cecilia Testa (Royal Holloway).

 

“How State Support of Religion Shapes Religious Attitudes Toward Muslims,” Mark Helbling (WZB Berlin).

 

“Opposition to Race Targeted Policies -- Ideology or Racism?  Particular or Universal?  Experimental Evidence from Britain,” Robert Ford (Manchester).

 

“Nature over Nurture:  Explaining Muslim Integration Discrepancies in Britain, France, and the United States,” Justin Gest (Harvard).

 

Other speakers included:  Efrén Pérez (Vanderbilt), Lauren Prather (Stanford), Jorge Bravo (Rutgers), Harris Mylonas (George Washington), Harris Mylonas (George Washington), Rahsaan Maxwell (UNC-Chapel Hill), and Matthew Wright (American).

 

We welcome you to visit our website for additional details about this event.

 

 

 

On May 29, 2014, Josef Joffe, FSI Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution Research Fellow, and publisher/editor of the German weekly Die Zeit, talked about his latest book, The Myth of America’s Decline:  Politics, Economics, and a Half Century of False Prophesies.  Stephen Krasner and Kathyrn Stoner served as discussants.  We welcome you to visit our website for an audio recording of the event. 

 

On April 30, May 1, and May 2, 2014, Adam Tooze, Barton M. Briggs Professor of History at Yale University, delivered The Europe Center Lectureship on Europe and the World.  This series of three lectures focused successively on diplomatic, economic, and social aspects of the troubled interwar history of Europe and its relationship with the wider world.  Video recordings of the lectures are available for viewing on our website.

 

 

 

The Europe Center regularly sponsors the research of undergraduate and graduate students through our research grant, internship, and scholarly exchange programs.  We would like to introduce you to some of the students that we support and the projects on which they are working.  Our featured student this month has been sponsored by the Center’s Program on Sweden, Scandinavia, and the Baltic Region.

 

Jessie Marino, a DMA candidate in Composition at Stanford, recently returned from Copenhagen’s SPOR festival, where she was selected as one of five artists from a field of 140 (representing 34 nationalities) to perform her original work, titled “Heartfelt bird, vivid and great in style.”  “I was commissioned by the SPOR Festival to compose a new piece featuring percussionist Serge Vuille and pianist Mark Knoop (photo inset) which was featured in a concert of all world premiere works,” writes Marino.  “This event allowed me to meet new musicians, artists, curators, and composers who are working under similar guises and to exchange ideas about how our art can expand and develop in the 21st century.” 

 

Marino (inset) is also a recipient of a summer travel grant from the Center’s Graduate Student Grant Program.  She will be traveling to Germany to attend the 2014 Darmstadt International Summer Course for New Music.  Marino writes that the opportunity will give her the chance to “practice and perform my own compositions,” to “work and develop new ideas with composers and academics,” and to “attend lectures on current research, developments and discoveries in sound production and music technology.”

 

 

 

 

 

The Europe Center serves as a research hub bringing together Stanford faculty members, students, and researchers conducting cutting-edge research on topics related to Europe.  Our faculty affiliates draw from the humanities, social sciences, and business and legal traditions, and are at the forefront of scholarly debates on Europe-focused themes.  The Center regularly highlights new research by faculty affiliates that is of interest to the broader community.  

 

David Laitin and his co-author Rafaela Dancygier’s article in the Annual Review of Political Science, “Immigration into Europe: Economic Discrimination, Violence, and Public Policy,” investigates and reviews recent research on changing Western European demographic patterns, and its implications for labor-market discrimination, immigrant-state relations, and immigrant-native violence.  The authors “discuss some of the methodological challenges that scholars have not fully confronted in trying to identify the causes and consequences of discrimination and violence,” and propose pathways to resolve contradictory results in existing studies regarding the economic consequences of immigration policymaking.  Laitin is the James T. Watkins IV and Elise V. Watkins Professor of Political Science at Stanford University.  

 

Additional information about The Europe Center’s research program on migration can be found here, and a copy of the research article can be found here.  

 

 

The regular seminar series sponsored by The Europe Center will be on break during the summer months.  We invite you to attend the following event of interest:

 

August 20, 2014

7:00 pm -- 9:00 pm

Film Screening 

Forasters (Outsiders), dir. Ventura Pona

Joan Ramon Resina, Director of The Europe Center’s Iberian Studies Program, will lead a Q&A session after the film.  The screening is part of the summer film series, “Beyond Boundaries:  Race, Gender and Culture Across the Globe,” organized by the Stanford Global Studies Division.

Braun Corner (Building 320), Room 105