Brigid Laffan

Director of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies

Contact details:

• Email: [email protected]
• Tel. [+39] 055 4685 - 792
• Fax [+39] 055 4685 - 804
• Office: Villa Schifanoia, VS035
• Administrative Assistants: Sarah Beck and Sarah Bernstein

Biographical Note

Brigid Laffan is Director and Professor at the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies and Director of the Global Governance Programme at the European University Institute (EUI), Florence. She was Director of the European Governance and Politics Programme until August 2020. In August 2013, Professor Laffan joined us after leaving the School of Politics and International Relations (SPIRe) University College Dublin (UCD), where she was Professor of European Politics. She was Vice-President of UCD and Principal of the College of Human Sciences from 2004 to 2011.

Previously, she was the founding director of the Dublin European Institute UCD from 1999 and in March 2004 she was elected as a member of the Royal Irish Academy. She is a member of the Board of the Mary Robinson Foundation for Climate Justice, the Fulbright Commission (until September 2013) and was the 2013 Visiting Scientist for the EXACT Marie Curie Network.

In November 2018 she was ranked among the women who shape  Europe by POLITICO and was also awarded by the University of Limerick Alumni Association with its highest honour.

In September 2014 Professor Laffan was awarded the UACES Lifetime Achievement Award. In 2012 she was awarded the THESEUS Award for outstanding research on European Integration. In 2010 she was awarded the Ordre national du Mérite by the President of the French Republic.

Research Interests

Her areas of research are:

• Dynamic of European Integration
• EU Governance and Europeanisation
• Brexit
• Public Finances

Publications

Since the UK Referendum on the EU membership Professor Laffan has closely followed the developments and written about it. In 2017 she wrote a book chapter on Brexit: a tale of exit over voice, as well as numerous journal articles and Opinion pieces.

Between 2016 and 2017 she co-edited with Alfredo De Feo threel books, namely Scrutiny of EU policies, Effectiveness and Added value of the EU budget and in 2016 EU own resources: momentum for a reform?

Following the launch conference of the programme European Governance and Politics Programme, Brigid co-edited the book 2017: Europe's bumper year of elections, released in December 2018. 

She has published widely on European Integration including Core-periphery relations in the European Union (2016), Ireland and the European Union (2008), Renovation or Revolution: new territorial politics in Ireland and the United Kingdom' (2005), 'Europe's Experimental Union: Re thinking Integration' (1999) and more.

For her complete bibliography refer to the EUI Cadmus Repository.