Skip to main content

Local and Regional Stakeholders and European Integration

Summer school

Summerschool

The Institute for European and global studies Alliance Europa organises a Summerschool for PhD students from the 2Oth to the 24th June, 2022 in Nantes. During the event, they will address local stakeholders issues regarding European integration.

Are you a PhD student in Humanities and Social Sciences interested in European studies? Is your thesis related to any of the scientific challenges of the Institute for European and global studies Alliance Europa? Do you understand English and French and have a perfect oral and written command of one of these two languages? Are you interested in :

  • Solving local issues in an interdisciplinary and international team?
  • Discovering the work of a consultant?
  • Meeting local actors of the Pays de la Loire region: public institutions, associations, companies?

Then this offer is for you!

For five days, you will take on the role of consultant to offer a new multidisciplinary perspective to local stakeholders: public institutions, private organisations, associations, and the media of the Pays de la Loire region. You will formulate a diagnosis providing answers to the local stakeholder on issues related to :

  • Lobbying and networking strategies to participate in and influence European policies
  • Ways of seizing European opportunities locally
  • Raising awareness about Europe on a local and regional scale.

The June Summerschool will offer the opportunity for European PhD students to adopt the skills of consultants and work on a real issue faced by local stakeholders in matter of European integration. Local stakeholders (public institution, firm, NGO) will get feedback from a pluridisciplinary team to rethink links between their activities and European governance.

 

Context

Since the 1980s, the increased impact of local and regional stakeholders in European integration has been facilitated by major developments such as the acceleration of the globalisation process which has gradually eroded the state's monopoly as the only legitimate actor in foreign policy. Along with the emergence of a transnational society that transcends borders, the processes of decentralization or devolution of powers has widened the previously limited opportunities of subnational authorities in terms of international relations.

At the same time, the European Union instituted a system of multi-level governance in which local and regional authorities intervened, in a more or less close relationship with the States. The development of EU policies and their funding raised the stakes for territorial policies and for all political and socio-economic actors. Actor networks therefore become a mode of action for influencing policies and decisions likely to impact them.

The numerous crises on the continent have not weakened the process. On the contrary, they offer up an opportunity to shift our vision of Europe by increasing citizen participation, including at the local level, by relying on dynamic civil societies. Local and regional authorities can innovate in raising awareness, information, and communication policies on Europe to facilitate populations taking ownership of it.

This interdisciplinary field of research allows for a different approach to the study of European integration, which not only factors in a bottom-up approach but also broadens the scope of actors, leaving behind one primarily centered on capital cities and European institutions. There are many specificities and territorial singularities in Europe, but the study of European actions, policies and strategies of actors in Nantes and the Loire region, in a territory that has seen the birth of many citizen initiatives, will be part of a comparative vision thanks to the international nature of our Summer school.

 

Programme

15 to 20 international doctoral students accompanied by academics in humanities and social sciences will meet for five days to take on a mission from a local player and to help them advance their thinking in relation to the European dimension of their activity.

Our participative and innovative model will be conducive to exchanges between doctoral students working in the field of European and international studies and non-academic actors to develop new professional skills in consulting for the socio-economic world, the media, civil society and local authorities.

The programme does not require expertise in European governance but does require a curiosity for interdisciplinarity and the non-academic world. A reading work before the Summerschool will be required. The work and the debates will be in English and French.

The detailed programme will be updated on the Institute’s website.

 

Call and application form

20 - 24 Jun 2022 Nantes, France