Dear friends and colleagues of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe,

Welcome to our latest newsletter edition!

Since the winter term has now come to an end, we would like to take the opportunity to present you past KFG events. At the same time, we are looking forward to a full agenda for spring and summer.

In December, the two-day conference “Re-Reading Risse” brought together a number of distinguished scholars who discussed Thomas Risses wide-ranging contributions to the field of political science and international relations – and celebrated his 60^th birthday. In January, on the occasion of winning a prestigious research grant of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, KFG Senior Fellow Jeffrey T. Checkel talked about the “The Social Dynamics of Civil War” at the Humboldt Lecture 2016. At the KFG, workshops on Process Tracing and Text Analysis, organized by KFG fellows Sören Stapel, Stefano Palestini, and Jeff Checkel, were held with great success.

We are delighted to announce that the Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism (co-edited by Tanja A. Börzel and Thomas Risse) has finally been published. In March, the handbook will officially be launched at the KFG Reception at the International Studies Association (ISA) Annual Conference 2016 in Atlanta, Georgia. The accompanying roadshow continues in April in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The next stop of the roadshow is planned for November in Pretoria, South Africa.

Lastly, we would like to draw your attention to several new issues of the Working Paper Series, written by scholars affiliated with the KFG.

We wish you a relaxing term break and an inspiring summer term 2016.

Warm regards,

Tanja A. Börzel, Thomas Risse & the KFG-Team

When this newsletter was about to be sent around, the very sad news reached us that one of our regular senior fellows, Prof. Stephen Clarkson, University of Toronto, has suddenly passed away on February 28, 2016. He was on a trip with students in Portugal when he contracted a virus from which he was unable to recover. He died in Freiburg at the home of Nora Born, his wife.

KFG director Thomas Risse turned 60 on 17 December 2015. On this occasion, Anja Jetschke (University of Göttingen) and Andrea Liese (University of Potsdam), together with the KFG team, organized a workshop reviewing Risses contribution to the field. The workshop took place at the Seminaris Campus Hotel Dahlem on 18-19 December 2015.

The Research College “The Transformative Power of Europe” and the Collaborative Research Center “Governance in Areas of Limited Statehood,” both located at Freie Universität Berlin, jointly organized a two-day workshop on “Text Analysis and the Study of International Institutions – Data, Methods, and Theoretical Approaches” in Berlin on 15-16 January 2016. The workshop involved scholars from across the world and from a multitude of backgrounds in order to facilitate the exchange with regard to both previous achievements as well as current and planned research steps regarding text analysis and the study of international institutions.

On 20 January 2016, on the initiative of the KFG Postdocs, KFG Senior Fellow Jeffrey T. Checkel held a workshop on Process Tracing Analysis (PTA). The workshop benefited from the recently published book Process Tracing. From Metaphor to Analytic Tool, edited by Andrew Bennett and Jeffrey Checkel. The KFG Postdocs and PhD students as well as Postdocs from the Hertie School of Governance participated in the event.

On Wednesday, 27 January 2016, KFG senior fellow Jeffrey T. Checkel held his Humboldt Lecture on the occasion of winning the prestigious research grant of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The topic of social dynamics of civil war drew many interested students as well as researchers to Hörsaal G in Ihnestraße 22. The lecture had been co-organized by the KFG in cooperation with the Freie Universität Berlin and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation.

The KFG is pleased to announce the recent publication of the “Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism”, co-edited by the KFG directors Tanja A. Börzel and Thomas Risse. For more information please refer to the publisher’s website.

The KFG holds a number of events in the upcoming spring and summer. Please find an overview in the following section.

In April 2013, the FP7-research project MAXCAP (“Maximizing the Integration Capacity of the European Union”) was launched at the Center for European Integration at Freie Universität Berlin. KFG director Tanja A. Börzel is MAXCAP’s coordinator. After almost three years of intensive research, the consortium presented its major findings at MAXCAP’s final conference in The Hague, Netherlands, on January 22-23, 2016. MAXCAP’s key questions are: Has widening of the European Union (EU) come at the cost of deepening, as many policy-makers, media, and academic commentators had initially assumed prior to the ‘big bang’ enlargement of 2004 and 2007? How effective has the EU been in fostering democracy, the rule of law, and socio-economic development in the new member states and current candidate countries, and what needs to be done to maximize its integration capacity?

Four new KFG Working Papers have been released during the last months.

Amanda Clayton and Ed Stoddard tell us about their time at the KFG.