About The Europe Center

The Europe Center has created a program for new thinking about Europe in the new millennium. The increasingly complex challenges facing Europe and its global relations—including labor migrations, strains on welfare economies, local identities, globalized cultures, expansion and integration, and threats of terrorism—coupled with Europe’s recent struggle to ratify a single constitution, underline the challenges that Europe and the United States share, and the need to bring Stanford’s finest multidisciplinary research into practical policy dialogue with an engaged public.

Founded in 1997 - originally, as the "European Forum" - the center gathers Stanford’s best Europeanists across all disciplines, encourages them to speak on our most pressing issues, and brings them into policy dialogue with public leaders.  The Europe Center at Stanford University is a part of the Freeman Spogli Institute for International Relations, and the Division of International, Comparative, and Area Studies.

Research

The center hosts public keynote and by-invitation addresses by influential speakers, with recent speakers including Former President of the UN General Assembly and Former Swedish Foreign Minister Jan Elliason, Former Danish Prime Minister Poul Rassmussen, Oxford chancellor Lord Christopher Patten, Latvian foreign affairs minister Artis Pabriks, former German foreign minister Joschka Fischer, the European Parliament’s Greens/European Free Alliance co-president Daniel Cohn-Bendit, authors Timothy Garton Ash, Aris Fioretos, Christopher Hitchens, Ian McEwan, and Orhan Pamuk, publisher and analyst Joseph Joffe, and ambassadors to the United States Sir David Manning (United Kingdom), Eva Nowotny (Austria), Alexandros Mallias (Greece), Andras Simonyi (Hungary), John Bruton (European Union), Klaus Scharioth (Germany).

To deepen these dialogues, the center’s director invites affiliated Stanford faculty and co-sponsoring Stanford centers to design international conferences to bring advanced research to the public. The center designs and hosts multiple international conferences on topics of pressing international concern.

The Center has developed on-going affiliations for research and policy analysis with international institutes including the Zentrum für Literatur- und Kulturforschung Berlin, the Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, Uppsala University, and multiple independent international organizations.   

Publications

The center produces a robust list of notable publications including:

• Roland Hsu, Ethnic Europe: Mobility, History, and Conflict in a Globalized World
• Norman Naimark, Stalin’s Genocides
• Roland Benedikter, Social Banking and Social Finance: Answers to the Economic Crisis
• Hans Ulrich Gombrecht, Welches Denken wirkt innovativ? Erwin Schroedinger als Vor-Bild

Areas of Focus

The center has ambitious plans to build its programs to serve as a center for Stanford and international research and public programs on Europe, and the global importance of trans-Atlantic relations. Over the next several years, the center seeks to launch new senior research and pre-and post-doctoral fellowships, an undergraduate honors program, graduate study abroad internships, and a publication series to widely disseminate its affiliates’ papers.

As part of its design for growth, the center invites its affiliated Stanford faculty to coordinate seminar and research fellowship programs on the following topics:

• Austria and Central Europe

• Sweden, Scandinavia, and the Baltic Region

• Iberian Studies

• U.S., Europe, Greater Middle East Trilateral Relations

• History, Memory, Reconciliation

• European Union Integration and Expansion

• Europe’s International Relations

• Democratic Transitions in Eastern Europe