Interdiscplinary Research

Interdisciplinary by design, the GEM PhD School welcomed researchers from a wide array of backgrounds. Its constituent research is located at the crossroads of seven fields of inquiry involved in assessing the challenges facing cotemporary “Globalisation, Europe and Multilateralism”. This diverse research agenda was structured along three “Jointly Executed Research Projects” (JERP), while overall coherence was fostered through a set of shared research platforms.

For a list of the GEM Fellows and Alumni, see our People-page.

1 Overarching research agenda

The various personal projects developed with the GEM PhD School have focused on one or several of the three interdependent phenomena acknowledged in its heading: Globalisation, Europe and Multilateralism.

The uniting factor binding the programme’s diverse activities has been a shared interest in: (1) the international dimension of contemporary governance challenges; (2) the lessons to be drawn from comparative research; and (3) the broader insights born from the specific institutional experience of the EU’s external action. Fittingly, the GEM PhD School’s resolutely outward looking perspective includes both Global Studies, as well as Comparative Research.

Empirically, if the European continent and in particular the EU’s experience were a central benchmark, even touchstone, of the programme’s research; alternative experiences be they at the global or other regional levels were also included with a view on feeding both comparative research and a better understanding of the EU’s international environment. As a result, individual projects have settled on a particular Global Governance initiative; a specific EU external Action or any other regional cooperation effort.

3 Structuring Jointly Executed Research Projects

Three specific Jointly Executed Research Projects (JERPs) - initiatives identified within the broader context of the GEM PhD School’s research agenda - offered the program its underlying backbone and ensured that the programme combined both inter-disciplinary dialogue with more focussed analysis of a given dimension of the broad and complex phenomena at play within Globalisation, Europe and Multilateralism.

This three-pronged structure was the product of the available expertise within the consortium. Each doctoral candidate was associated with one of the abovementioned research tracks and spent at least their first year at the institution heading the chosen Jointly Executed Research Project.

If each of these JERPs was a topic driven interdisciplinary project seeking to cover as many fields among the seven covered as need be; a relative level of specialisation can be observed in light of a given JERP’s research object’s affinity to a given set of disciplines.

• JERP MORGANITE – Multilateral Organizations, Regionalism and Global Governance: Institutions and the EU
• JERP CITRINE – Confrontations and Cooperation shaping International and Transnational Regulatory Interest and the EU
• JERP AMETRINE – Analysis of Multilateral, European and other Regional Initiatives as Normative Endeavors

7 Intersecting disciplines

All individual research projects are located at a given intersection of any of the following 7 disciplines:

• EU Studies
• International Relations & Security Studies
• International & EU Legal Studies
• Comparative Political Theory & Philosophy
• Comparative Political Sociology
• Comparative Regionalism
• International Political Economy