Founding Director, Center for the Study of Europe, Boston University
Vivien A. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Professor of International Relations and Political Science at Boston University, and Founding Director of BU's Center for the Study of Europe. Her research focuses on European political economy, institutions, democracy, and political theory. Recent books include Resilient Liberalism in Europe's Political Economy (co-edited, 2013), Debating Political Identity and Legitimacy in the European Union (co-edited, 2011), Democracy in Europe (2006)—named in 2015 by the European Parliament as one of the '100 Books on Europe to Remember'—and The Futures of European Capitalism (2002). Recent honors, awards, fellowships, and grants include an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels (ULB), the Belgian Franqui Interuniversity Chair for foreign scholars, a research fellowship from the European Commission (DG ECFIN), and a EU Commission HORIZON 2020 Grant: (ENLIGHTEN: 'European Legitimacy in Governing through Hard Times: The Role of European Networks¹-as a key researcher attached to the Free University of Brussels).
Schmidt is a Visiting Professor at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome and at the Copenhagen Business School. She has also been a visiting professor or scholar at Sciences Po in Paris, the Free University of Berlin, , the Free University of Brussels, the European University Institute, Oxford University, Cambridge University, and Warwick University, among others. She is past head of the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) and sits on the advisory boards of the Wissenschaft Zentrum Berlin, the Vienna Institute for Peace, and the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (Brussels). She has published ten books, over 100 scholarly journal articles or chapters in books, and numerous policy briefs and comments, most recently on the Eurozone crisis. Her current work focuses on democratic legitimacy in Europe, with a special focus on the challenges resulting from the Eurozone crisis, and on methodological theory, in particular on the importance of ideas and discourse in political analysis (discursive institutionalism).