|history|activities|working group|graduate colloquium|international visitors|outreach|newsletter|

History
The Duke Center for European Studies was established in a joint initiative with the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1989.  In 1994 the US Department of Education awarded the consortium with a Title VI grant and designated us a National Resource Center.  This grant was renewed for another three years in 1997. In the summer of 1998 the European Union awarded us with a three-year grant, and we became one of the ten official European Union Centers in the United States.  The Duke-UNC Center for European Studies brings together a depth, and quality of faculty in European Studies found at few other schools.  Duke Europeanist faculty is drawn from highly regarded departments, several of which have been recently ranked among the top five in the nation.

Activities
As a European Union Center, and National Resource Center on Western Europe, we promote programs, courses, and research that directly address questions concerning contemporary Europe, and the European Union.  Our goal is to ensure that faculty, students, and the larger community have access to the finest scholarship, and the most current resources on modern Europe.  We host conferences, visiting scholars, and other dignitaries from the European Union, support Duke faculty with research grants and travel awards. Additionally we dispense travel awards and yearlong fellowships to Duke graduate students. Each year, we also provide Perkins Library with funding that is used for the purchase of library resources on Europe. 

Below follows a list of some of the Center's ongoing projects:

Working Groups
The Center sponsors and facilitates working groups composed of graduate students and faculty who meet monthly for discussion and reading on a specific topic.

From 1998-2000, the Center sponsored "Europe from Below," which focused on ethnic, immigrant, linguistic, and gender minorities in contemporary Europe. In Fall 1999 Europe from Below sponsored a film series which included original European films that deal with the group's study subject.

In 1999-2000, the Center assisted in the formation of a new group of faculty from the Schools of Law, Environment, Business, Public Policy, and the Department of Botany, focusing on the EU/US Debate on the Precautionary Principle and Genetically Modified Organisms. This group will continue to meet this year, and plans to host a conference in 2001 with support from the Center for European Studies.

In 2000-2001, the Center also assisted the development of a new working group entitled "The Public and the Scientist," facilitated by the new Duke Center for French and Francophone Studies. This group sponsored a panel workshop in Spring 2001, entitled "Science Pure and Impure: Doing Science in an Age of Public Scrutiny." Participants included Jean Marc Lévy-Leblond, Professor of Physics at the University of Nice and Dominique Pestre, Director of Studies at L'Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).

Graduate Colloquium

The Center began a new initiative in 2000-2001: "European Junctions," an interdisciplinary graduate student colloquium, which examines how Europe's cultural heritage and recent political and economic changes will both challenge and influence the future of a United Europe. Papers presented during monthly meetings will be submitted to an editorial board consisting of faculty members from Duke and UNC and published as a working paper series in print and on our website. European Junctions will continue to meet in 2001-2002.

International Visitors

Each year the Center hosts a number of European scholars and dignitaries who come and stay at Duke.

During the Fall 2000 semester, Mikel Landabaso was in residence at Duke and UNC-Chapel Hill as a Visiting European Union Fellow. CES also hosted several prominent short-term visitors from the EU during the 2000-2001 academic year, including Ambassador Guenter Burghardt, Head of the EU Delegation to the US; Christoph Heusgen, Director of the Policy Unit, EU Council General Secretariat; Nicholas Forwood, recent appointee to the Court of First Instance at the European Court of Justice; and Brice Dickson, Chief Commissioner of the Northern Ireland Human Rights Commission.

Check our sneak preview of CES visitors for the 2001-2002 academic year.

Outreach
Each summer the Center organizes an outreach activity with workshops, seminars and lectures for North Carolina high school teachers and faculty at local four-year colleges. The Center has also developed an extensive collection of language and area studies teaching and learning resources, available through our outreach site.

Newsletter
People who sign up for our mailing list will receive our electronic newsletter on a weekly basis during the fall and spring semester.  The newsletter lists Europeanist events going on at Duke and the surrounding area, and it also announces conferences, calls for papers, funding and job opportunities in the field of European Studies.