Dear friends and colleagues of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe,

Welcome to the newest edition of our newsletter!

During the past summer term, KFG was happy to host and organize many conferences, workshops, and a roundtable discussion. In the following, we would like to share our impressions with you. As KFG is slowly moving towards the end of the project, we are very much looking forward to the last few regular Jour Fixe meetings and our Summer Party in July.

The highlights of the past spring season were international events such as the ISA reception in Atlanta and the conference on the new “Oxford Handbook of Comparative Regionalism” in Rio de Janeiro. At the same time, KFG scholars were quite busy with discussing and presenting not only in the US and Brazil, but also in Berlin. KFG senior scholars Wolfram Kaiser and Kiran Klaus Patel organized the workshop “From Empires to Empire? European Integration in Global Context, 1950s to 1990s,” and Kathleen J. Hancock hosted an international workshop on “The Intersection of Comparative Regionalism and Energy Issues.” To honor the tradition, KFG again participated in the Long Night of Sciences with a roundtable on “Europe at a crossroads”. Furthermore, we report about the Political Science Conference “National, European, and International Challenges of Refugee Flows” and the workshop "The EU and Peripheries in Competition" organized by Rachel Epstein and Martin Rhodes.

Also, we launched a new social media channel on LinkedIn in order to stay in touch with our fellows and alumni and published two new working papers by Stephen Clarkson and Frank Schimmelfennig.

As you know, we were shocked to hear about the passing of our dear colleague Stephen Clarkson. Our thoughts are still with his widow Nora, who joined us for a special Jour Fixe meeting in Stephen's honor.

As the KFG is drawing to a close, we wish you a relaxed summer break and say goodbye until the next newsletter is published in November.

All the best,

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