About the Forum

The Forum on Contemporary Europe 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, the Forum 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.

Research

The Forum has hosted events with invited speakers including 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 Christopher Hitchens, Ian McEwan, and Orhan Pamuk, and ambassadors to the United States Sir David Manning (United Kingdom), Eva Nowotny (Austria), Alexandros Mallias (Greece), Andras Simonyi (Hungary), and John Bruton (European Union).

To deepen these dialogues, the Forum’s directors invite affiliated Stanford faculty and co-sponsoring Stanford centers to design international conferences to bring advanced research to the public. The Forum will host and co-host multiple international conferences on topics that address European and trans-Atlantic dynamics of society, culture, security, and politics.

The Forum has ambitious plans to build its programs to serve as a center for Stanford and international research and public programs on Europe. Over the next several years, the Forum 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 Forum will invite its affiliated Stanford faculty to coordinate seminar and research fellowship programs on the following topics:

• Austria and Central Europe Iberian Studies
• European Union Integration and Expansion
• Europe’s International Relations
• Europe, the eastern Mediterranean, and the greater Middle East
• Scandinavia and Europe’s New Economies
• Democratic Transitions in Eastern Europe

Faculty Researchers

More than 30 Stanford faculty members are currently affiliated with the Forum, which continues to expand its affiliations across all seven of Stanford’s schools. In addition, the Forum regularly hosts visiting scholars from Europe, including a senior professor to hold the Austrian Chair. The Forum also maintains close relations with the diplomatic missions and cultural centers of European countries in the United States.