The Wiener-Anspach Foundation is delighted to announce that the holder of the 2022-2023 Ganshof van der Meersch Chair is Chris Bickerton (Professor in Modern European Politics at the University of Cambridge and Official Fellow at Queens’ College, Cambridge). Initially scheduled for 2020/2021, this chair had to be postponed due to the pandemic.
Educated at Oxford and in Geneva, Chris Bickerton has taught at the universities of Oxford, Amsterdam and Sciences Po (Paris). His research has focused on multiple aspects of contemporary European politics, including European integration and transformations in the continent’s democracies. His book European Integration: From Nation States to Member States (Oxford University Press 2012) was awarded the Best Book Prize by the University Association of Contemporary European Studies. He has published in 2016 a best-selling book, The European Union: A Citizen’s Guide (Penguin) and in 2021 Technopopulism: The New Logic of Democratic Politics (Oxford University Press), co-authored with Carlo Invernizzi Accetti. Chris Bickerton is a visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges and at Paris 1-Sorbonne (in 2023). He is a regular contributor to the international print media and has written for the New York Times, Financial Times, Guardian, and the Monde diplomatique.
He will be welcomed at the Université libre de Bruxelles by Professors Nathalie Brack, Ramona Coman and Amandine Crespy (Department of Political Science, ULB), with whom he conducted the project “Conflicts of Sovereignty in a European Union in Crisis (SovEU)“, funded by the Wiener-Anspach Foundation from 2018 to 2021.
The general theme of the chair will be “On the Brink: A History of Europe since 1989”, which is the title of a major forthcoming book. “This work of contemporary history will analyse how the events of the last three decades have shaped the present era,” writes Chris Bickerton. “Europe was associated with the so-called ‘end of history’ after 1989. This project focuses on writing the history of this period after the end of the Cold War, showing that if Europe has become the crucible of many contemporary global challenges, this is partly due to the events and processes of the last three decades.”.
In the framework of the chair, Prof. Bickerton will give a public lecture at ULB on Thursday 30 March 2023 at 6:30 pm. More information on this lecture and on the full programme of the chair will soon be available on our website.
The Ganshof van der Meersch Chair was established in 1995 in memory of Walter Jean Ganshof van der Meersch, founder and president of the Institute for European Studies at the ULB, holder of the chair of Public Law at the ULB, attorney general at the Belgian Court of Cassation and vice-president of the European Court of Human Rights. He was also the second president of the Fondation Wiener-Anspach. The chair, held at ULB by a visiting professor from Cambridge or Oxford, focuses on the economic, historical, political and legal aspects of European integration or on public law.