Stanford University

Anna Grzymala-Busse Appointed New Director of The Europe Center

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The Europe Center is pleased to announce that Professor Anna Grzymala-Busse will assume its directorship on September 1, 2018. Founded in 1997 and jointly sponsored by the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies (FSI) and Stanford Global Studies (SGS), The Europe Center (TEC) provides an interdisciplinary platform for collaboration among scholars who teach and conduct research on the histories, cultures, institutions, and people of Europe. Grzymala-Busse will succeed Kenneth Scheve, a senior fellow at FSI and professor of political science, who has led the center since 2013.

“I’m delighted and honored to be appointed as the new director of TEC,” says Grzymala-Busse, who joined Stanford in 2017 as an FSI senior fellow, a professor of political science, and the Michelle and Kevin Douglas Professor of International Studies. “My research focuses on European, and especially post-communist, politics, so this is a great opportunity. TEC has been doing an outstanding job of supporting research, undergraduate education, and programming on Europe. I’m looking forward to working with faculty and programs across the disciplines to further make TEC a prominent hub of all things European at Stanford.”

At a time of heightened scholarly interest in Asia, Latin America, and Africa, a renewed focus on Europe’s lessons and experiences can greatly enhance our knowledge of both contemporary global affairs and Europe itself. With that end in mind, The Europe Center promotes productive intellectual exchange about Europe from a variety of disciplinary perspectives and through an array of programs. The undergraduate program in European studies affords students opportunities to inculcate a broad understanding of the history, culture, politics and societies of Europe. Its grants and visitor programs support innovative research by scholars from both Stanford and academic institutions in Europe.

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SGS Summer Film Festival: "Force Majeure" (2014, dir. Ruben Östlund; Swedish)

Force Majeure is a 2014 Swedish film directed by Ruben Östlund. A model Swedish family is on a holiday in the French Alps. During lunch at a restaurant, an avalanche bears down on the happy diners. The father’s selfish reaction to the ensuing panic causes cracks in his marriage and relationships with his children.

The film will be moderated by The Europe Center Visiting Scholar Jonas Tallberg, Professor of Political Sience at Stockholm University. Jonas's primary research interests are global governance and European Union politics. He currently directs the research program “Legitimacy in Global Governance” (LegGov), funded by Riksbankens Jubileumsfond. His most recent book is The Opening Up of International Organizations: Transnational Access in Global Governance, co-authored with Thomas Sommerer, Theresa Squatrito, and Christer Jönsson.

Force Majeure is the fifth film in the annual SGS Summer Film Festival running from June 13th to September 12th. The film will be presented with English subtitles. This year's festival features nine films from around that world that focus on the theme “Friends & Family: Tales From Near and Far.”

The film festival will run most Wednesdays at 7 p.m., from June 13 to September 12, and feature a post-screening discussion. 

Admission is free and open to the community. No RSVP required.

Films will be screened in the Geology Corner, Building 320, Room 105. Click here for a map.

The Geology Corner (Bldg. 320), Room 105
450 Serra Mall

Jonas Tallberg

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Visiting Scholar at The Europe Center, 2018
Professor of Political Science, Stockholm University
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Jonas Tallberg is Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University, where he directs the research group on global and regional governance, selected as a leading area of research at SU. His primary research interests are global governance and European Union politics. His most recent book is the The Opening Up of International Organizations: Transnational Access in Global Governance (Cambridge University Press, 2013), co-authored with Thomas Sommerer, Theresa Squatrito and Christer Jönsson. Earlier books include Leadership and Negotiation in the European Union (Cambridge University Press, 2006). His articles have appeared in journals such as International Organization, International Studies Quarterly, British Journal of Political Science, European Journal of International Relations, Review of International Organizations, and Journal of Common Market Studies.

Tallberg has won numerous awards for his research, including the Forskraft Award for the best Swedish dissertation on international relations, the JCMS Prize for the best article in Journal of Common Market Studies, and the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award from the German Humboldt Foundation. He has been awarded research grants from, among others, the European Research Council, Fulbright Commission, Swedish Research Council, Riksbankens Jubileumsfond, and Nordic Research Academy.

Tallberg has been a visiting researcher at, among other institutions, Harvard University, McGill University, WZB Berlin Social Science Center, Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, and European Commission. He currently directs the six-year research program “Legitimacy in Global Governance” (statsvet.su.se/leggov) and the four-year research project “The Performance of International Organizations” (statsvet.su.se/forskning/forskningsprojekt/pio).

Professor of Political Science at Stockholm University Moderator

Southern France and the Latin East in the 13th Century: Crusade, Networks, Exchanges (Day 2)

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This is day 2 of the two-day conference presented by The France-Stanford Center for Interdisciplinary Studies, the Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies (CMEMS), and the Centre d'études Supérieures de Civilisation Médiévale at the University of Poitiers. 

All sessions are in Levinthal Hall at the Stanford Humanties Center unless otherwise noted in the agenda.

 

April 20, 2018

Session 4: 9-10.30am   Circulation and Borrowings

Moderator: Fiona Griffiths (Stanford)

Nicolas Prouteau (U Poitiers): “Circulation and Borrowings between East and West in the Thirteenth Century : The case of Military Architecture”

Estelle Ingrand-Varenne (U Poitiers): “Holy Land Epigraphy in Comparison with Thirteenth-Century Inscriptions of Southern France”

 

Visit to Stanford Libraries Special Collections: 10.30-11.30am

Stanford University Libraries, First Floor of Green East

 

Lunch for Conference Participants and Attendees: 11.30-1pm

Picnic tables outside Stanford Humanities Center

 

Session 5: 1-3pm   Modes of Transmission: Stories and Song

Moderator: Marie-Pierre Ulloa (Stanford)

Rachel Golden (U of Tennessee): “Gendered Grief, Disruptive Motion, and Reinvention in French Crusade Song”

Susan Noakes (U of Minnesota—Twin Cities): “Boccaccio’s Cyprus and Multi-Lingual Aspects of Mediterranean Trade Revealed in Song”

Lynn Ramey (Vanderbilt): “Storytelling on Crusade: Modeling Textual Transmission using a Video Game Engine”

 

Coffee Break: 3-3.30pm   Stanford Humanities Center Lobby

 

Session 6: 3.30-5.30pm   Theories of Translatio and Reception

Stanford Humanities Center Board Room. Moderator: Marisa Galvez (Stanford)  

Francisco Prado-Vilar (Harvard): “The Beauty and Pathos of Crusader Bodies: Art, Antiquity, and Eschatology from Bohemond to the Leper King”

Shirin Khanmohamadi (SFCU): “Saracens, Objects, and Translatio in the Crusade Cycle”

 

Discussion with Concluding Response: 4.30-5.30pm

Stanford Humanities Center Board Room.

Jessica Goldberg (UCLA), introduced by Laura Stokes (Stanford)

 

Closing Reception: 5.30-7pm   Stanford Humanities Center Lobby

 

For more information, please contact
mgalvez@stanford.edu
 
Co-sponsored by:  The Europe Center, the Division of Literatures, Cultures, and Languages, and the Department of History

 

Levinthal Hall,
Stanford Humanities Center
 

Conferences

Nuns' Priests' Tales: Men and Salvation in Medieval Women's Monastic Life

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During the Middle Ages, female monasteries relied on priests to provide for their spiritual care, chiefly to celebrate Mass in their chapels but also to hear their confessions and give last rites to their sick and dying. These men were essential to the flourishing of female monasticism during the eleventh and twelfth centuries, yet they rarely appear in scholarly accounts of the period, being largely absent from studies of both female monasticism and male religious life. Medieval sources are hardly more forthcoming. Although medieval churchmen consistently acknowledged the necessity of male spiritual supervision in female monasteries, they also warned against the dangers to men of association with women. Nuns' Priests' Tales investigates gendered spiritual hierarchies from the perspective of nuns' priests—ordained men (often local monks) who served the spiritual needs of monastic women.

Celibacy, misogyny, and the presumption of men's withdrawal from women within the religious life have often been seen as markers of male spirituality during the period of church reform. Yet, as Fiona J. Griffiths illustrates, men's support and care for religious women could be central to male spirituality and pious practice. Nuns' priests frequently turned to women for prayer and intercession, viewing women's prayers as superior to their own, since they were the prayers of Christ's "brides." Casting nuns as the brides of Christ and adopting for themselves the role of paranymphus (bridesman, or friend of the bridegroom), these men constructed a triangular spiritual relationship in which service to nuns was part of their dedication to Christ. Focusing on men's spiritual ideas about women and their spiritual service to them, Nuns' Priests' Tales reveals a clerical counter-discourse in which spiritual care for women was depicted as a holy service and an act of devotion and obedience to Christ.

 

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Voting Patterns in the European Parliament: Is the Structure of Political Conflict Changing?

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In this paper we study the changing multi-dimensional structure of political (ideological) conflict in the European Parliament. We analyze whether a structural change in terms of coalition formation is taking place in the current European Parliament.  Using the roll call votes from the sixth (2004-09), seventh (2009-14), and eighth (2014-19) European Parliaments, we show that, as in the past, two dimensions are needed to explain voting behavior in the European Parliament.  However, we find that the dimensionality of policy space has changed.  Before 2014, the first dimension was left-right and the second dimension was pro/anti-EU; after 2014, the first dimension seems to be related to pro/anti-EU and left-right.  

 

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Abdul Noury is an associate professor in the division of the social sciences at New York University Abu Dhabi. This year he is a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

William J. Perry Conference Room
Encina Hall, 2nd floor
616 Serra Street

Abdul Noury Associate Professor of Political Science Speaker New York University Abu Dhabi
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European Governance
European Governance Seminar Series

Global Europe: Rethinking migration, democracy, and what sustains Europe at home at abroad

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The "Brexit" has been seen as a major blow that changes the future of Europe, at the time when nationalist and separatist movements seem most ascendant, and the EU seems to be the toxic subject for plebiscites, the European Union is expanding its role as a global actor. These referendums, and threats to withdraw, are spurring Member States to return to the roots of the European Project. From its historical foundation, that project prizes freedom from war on the continent, and prosperity through free movement of trade and social capital.

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Digital transformation of democracy? Challenges and Opportunities

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In this talk we will discuss the challenges and opportunities of various digital initiatives and their potential to affect democracy. More concretely, we will discuss the status of Open Government Data, eID, and Online privacy in Austria and in an international context:
 
Open Government Data (OGD) is a global trend to enable transparency by making public data accessible to citizens, providing trustworthy and transparent information in machine readable form, not least promising to counter populism and "fake news". Austria's OGD initiative is a success story, but also faces many challenges. 
   
Electronic IDs can provide means to make eGovernment and interaction with public institutions more efficient, but depending on how they are implemented, also provide a potential threat to privacy and enable surveillance: this holds both IDs provided by international companies but also for national eIDs: against this background, we shall compare the Austrian eID system with other, alternative models. 
 
Lastly, we shall speak about transparency and accountability of processing of personal information by both private and public institutions. The new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides both an opportunity, but also imposes several challenges to the government economically and in terms of preserving the citizens' rights.
 
Axel's presentation slides are available at http://polleres.net/presentations/
 
Axel Polleres 
Axel Polleres is currently a visiting professor at Stanford under the Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair Professors program hosted by The Europe Center and the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies. At his home institution he heads the Institute of Information Business of Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien) which he joined in Sept 2013 as a full professor in the area of "Data and Knowledge Engineering."
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

Axel Polleres

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Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair Professor (2017-2018)
Professor of Data and Knowledge Engineering, Vienna University of Economics and Business
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Axel Polleres heads the Institute of Information Business of Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien) which he joined in Sept 2013 as a full professor in the area of "Data and Knowledge Engineering". Since January 2017 he is also a member of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna Faculty. He obtained his Ph.D. and habilitation from Vienna University of Technology and worked at University of Innsbruck, Austria, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Madrid, Spain, the Digital Enterprise Research Institute (DERI) at the National University of Ireland, Galway, and for Siemens AG's Corporate Technology Research division before joining WU Wien. His research focuses on querying and reasoning about ontologies, rules languages, logic programming, Semantic Web technologies, Web services, knowledge management, Linked Open Data, configuration technologies and their applications. He has worked in several European and national research projects in these areas. Axel has published more than 100 articles in journals, books, and conference and workshop contributions and co-organised several international conferences and workshops in the areas of logic programming, Semantic Web, data management, Web services and related topics and acts/acted as editorial board member for JWS, SWJ and IJSWIS. Moreover, he actively contributed to international standardisation efforts within the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) where he co-chaired the W3C SPARQL working group.

Head, Institute of Information Business, Vienna University of Economics and Business

Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair Professor: Axel Polleres

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Axel PolleresAxel Polleres is currently a visiting professor at Stanford under the Distinguished Visiting Austrian Chair Professors program hosted by The Europe Center in the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Studies.
 
During his stay at Stanford, Axel will work mainly with the Biomedical Informatics Research Center (BMIR). At his home institution he heads the Institute of Information Business of Vienna University of Economics and Business (WU Wien) which he joined in September 2013 as a full professor in the area of Data and Knowledge Engineering. Since January 2017 he is also a member of the Complexity Science Hub Vienna Faculty. Apart from his research in the area of efficient and intelligent Data management, Semantic Web and Web standards, he recently co-founded a research lab on Privacy and Sustainable Computing at WU where he works on projects about privacy and lowering the entry barriers to Open Data on the Web. 
 
While visiting Stanford, he plans on transfer his work on Linked Data, which he so far applied mostly in the are of Open Government Data, to other domains such as biomedical research data or in the library domain, both areas where the integration of vast amounts of heterogeneous (meta-)data from different sources and lowering entry-barriers to access this data are likewise important.
 
Axel will be giving a talk on Digital transformation of democracy? Challenges and Opportunities at The Europe Center on May 17, 2018. He will discuss the challenges and opportunities of various digital initiatives and their potential to affect democracy. More concretely, he will discuss the status of Open Government Data, eID, and Online privacy in Austria and in an international context:
 
Open Government Data (OGD) is a global trend to enable transparency by making public data accessible to citizens, providing trustworthy and transparent information in machine readable form, not least promising to counter populism and "fake news". Austria's OGD initiative is a success story, but also faces many challenges. Electronic IDs can provide means to make eGovernment and interaction with public institutions more efficient, but depending on how hey are implemented, also provide a potential threat to privacy and enable surveillance: this holds both IDs provided by international companies but also for national eIDs: against this background, we shall compare the Austrian eID system with other, alternative models. Lastly, he will speak about transparency and accountability of processing of personal information by both private and public institutions. The new European General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) provides both an opportunity, but also imposes several challenges to the government economically and in terms of preserving the citizens' rights.

 

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Featured Graduate Student Research: Michael Schwalbe

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Michael Schwalbe and friends in LondonMichael Schwalbe is a PhD candidate in Psychology and a researcher at the Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality. Michael’s research focuses on the psychology of change and how theory-driven interventions increase achievement and well-being. With the support of a research grant from The Europe Center, Michael traveled to a secure data room in London in October of 2017 to access and analyze final outcome data of a large-scale randomized control trial he helped design and implement across 13 further education colleges to improve basic literacy and numeracy in the United Kingdom in partnership with the Behavioural Insights Team.

In London, more specifically, Michael’s research focused on analyzing whether a culturally-adapted values affirmation intervention improves course passage and attendance rates in basic English and math courses at further education colleges, akin to community colleges, in the UK, a country with one of the lowest literacy and numeracy rates in the OECD. In registered planned analyses, the intervention was also predicted to be particularly effective for (a) students in remedial “functional skills” courses, and (b) Black Caribbean students, the lowest performing group facing academic stigma in the country.

Behavioral Insights Team Building in London
After enrollment, students (N = 4463, median age = 17) had been randomized to a control condition or a year-long intervention comprising four brief in-class exercises and 12 text messages that encouraged students to reflect on cherished personal values and memories, and to connect their educational experience to their values. In the pre-specified intent-to-treat (ITT) analysis, the intervention was found to increase overall course passage rates by 25%. Although passage rates were improved for all groups, the hypothesized stronger benefits for remedial students and Black Caribbean students were found for attendance. The intervention increased full year attendance rates for remedial students by 11% and for Black Caribbean students by 76%. The intervention did not have the same effect on Black African students who in the UK perform better educationally in part due to a different history of immigration to the UK. Results suggest that stigmatization can take different forms in different cultures, and that simply attending a vocationally focused community college in certain countries can create a form of identity threat for students regardless of their group.

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