Dear colleagues,
Below, please find the minutes of the annual meeting of the RN two days ago.
Can I also gently remind you that you need to renew your membership of the RN before 30 September if you would like to remain a member? Else it will expire then. You can very easily renew your membership under ‘mygroups’ in your Myecpr account:
https://ecpr.eu/MyEcpr/MyGroups.aspx
Best wishes,
Sandra
The meeting was on 13 September, 4-5pm CET.
Present: 10 members
Agenda:
- Development of RN in numbers
- Looking back – activities in 2020/21
- Looking forward – activities in 2021/22
- Any other business
1 – Development of the RN in numbers
The RN has developed very well. It was constituted with 88 members in late October 2021, and less than one year on, it has doubled its membership (now at 170). Its twitter page currently has 100 members. The development of its membership is seen as a sign of success of the RN and demand for a RN on DI.
2 – Looking back – activities in 2020/21
There were three main activities, apart from consolidating the RN: the joint session workshop in May 2021, the DI Garage with three iterations, and the section at the ecpr general conference.
At the joint session workshop in late May 2021, co-directed by Sandra Kröger and Markus Patberg, there were eight papers, discussed over three days. Participants praised the high quality of discussions and the very useful feedback they obtained.
Di Garage so far had three iterations in which Cristina Fasone and Diane Fromage, John Erik Fossum, and Aleksandra Spalińska intervened. All three webinars were well attended and generated interesting discussions and useful feedback for the presenters, so the shared assessment. Overall, this initiative is broadly welcome and supported.
At this year’s ecpr general conference, our RN had a section, chaired by Sandra Kröger and Christopher Lord. The section had eight panels, each with four to five papers, signalling a high demand for such a section. The panels were generally well attended, and discussions were lively and provided useful feedback. When reviewing the conference, it was mentioned that panels with five papers seemed too crowded, and a quick poll found that 80% of the attendants of the annual meeting recommend that no more than four papers (at most) should be included in any panel. As a result, our next section proposal will try and incorporate this recommendation as a new guideline.
3 – Looking forward – activities in 2021/22
Any member of the RN can develop a proposal for a joint session workshop, for 2022. Proposals should be sent to the steering committee of the RN which will decide in due course which proposal it supports (the RN can only lend its institutional support to one proposal per year).
As regards Di Garage, given the very positive feedback so far, this will be continued and continue to be on Thursdays, 2-3pm CET. Four iterations are already programmed. They are:
7 October 2021, 2-3pm: Martin Moland: Opting for opt-outs? Untangling the role of identity in shaping support for differentiated integration
4 November 2021, 2-3pm: Sandra Kröger and Thomas Loughran: The limits of support for differentiated integration as perceived by academic experts
9 December 2021, 2-3pm: Dirk Leuffen, Lisanne de Blok and colleagues: Public support for Differentiated Integration: Does Institutional Design Matter?
20 January 2022, 2-3pm: Christopher Lord: Benchmarking Brexit against the Norwegian model
If you are interested in presenting your work in progress in Di Garage, please get in touch with Cristina Fasone, at cristinafasone@gmail.com with a title, an abstract of circa 250 words, and the two preferred months of presentation.
As regards a section at next year’s (2022) ecpr general conference, Cristina Fasone and Thomas Winzen have kindly agreed to organise it. They will be in touch in due course with a proposal and a call for panels/papers.
We also discussed whether it would be a good idea to use the RN to facilitate the development of grant proposals, ie by organising a brainstorming event and putting together a data base in which colleagues express their interests, availability, etc. The idea was generally welcomed, and next steps will be developed this fall.
Any other business
An idea was presented to initiate a PhD group on DI, and to circulate a call for it via the RN.
Sandra Kröger, 15 September 2021
For the Steering Committee
