EUROPEAN UNIVERSITY INSTITUTE

Their core work

The European University Institute (EUI) is an international postgraduate and postdoctoral research university based near Florence, Italy, specializing in social sciences, law, economics, and political science with a strong European policy orientation. Their core work centers on analyzing European integration, migration governance, economic policy, and the political dynamics of the EU — producing research that directly informs EU policy-making and institutional reform. EUI hosts a large number of Marie Skłodowska-Curie and ERC fellows, making it a major hub for individual researcher excellence in European governance and transnational studies. They also contribute applied expertise to energy systems and climate policy, though their primary strength is firmly in the social and political sciences.

What they specialise in

How they've shifted over time

In the early period (2015–2018), EUI's work centered on European integration history, religion and migration intersections, and notably included technical energy projects on HVDC offshore transmission networks — an unusual outlier for a social sciences institution. From 2019 onward, the focus shifted decisively toward EU governance and policy-making, climate change, non-state actors, and asylum systems, reflecting the EU's own policy agenda around the Green Deal and migration compacts. The energy engineering work faded, replaced by a stronger emphasis on resilience, globalization, and the political dimensions of climate and migration challenges.

EUI is increasingly connecting its political science expertise to climate governance and multilevel EU policy-making, making them a strong partner for projects needing social science dimensions in environmental or security-related research.

How they like to work

EUI leads more often than it follows — coordinating 58% of its projects (40 out of 69), which is exceptionally high for a university. However, this is driven largely by individual ERC and MSCA grants where the researcher is inherently the coordinator. In larger consortia (RIA projects), they participate as valued partners contributing policy analysis and governance expertise. With 407 unique partners across 57 countries, they operate as a network hub rather than a loyal-partner organization, reflecting their role as an international institution that attracts researchers from across Europe.

EUI has collaborated with 407 distinct partners across 57 countries — one of the broadest networks in European social sciences. Their reach extends well beyond the EU into the Middle East, North Africa, and East Asia, mirroring their research on EU external relations and global migration.

What sets them apart

EUI occupies a rare position as an intergovernmental research university founded by EU member states, giving it unmatched proximity to European policy institutions and a truly pan-European researcher base. Unlike national universities, EUI operates at the intersection of academic research and EU policy design — their work on migration, governance, and economic union directly feeds into Commission and Council deliberations. For consortium builders, they bring not just research depth but institutional credibility and connections to Europe's policy-making core.

Highlights from their portfolio

• PanEur1970s
  Largest EUI-coordinated project (EUR 1.8M ERC grant) examining the history of pan-European cooperation from the perspective of Socialist regimes — a unique Cold War lens on EU integration.
• GlobalCitizenshipLaw
  Major ERC-funded project (EUR 1M) tackling the constitutional foundations of citizenship and migration law at global scale — directly relevant to ongoing EU migration policy debates.
• PROMOTION
  Unusual for EUI — a large energy infrastructure project (EUR 355K participation) on meshed HVDC offshore transmission networks, showing capacity to contribute to technical energy consortia.