François Duchêne

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The first François Duchêne Bursaries were awarded on
Friday 23 May 2008

The awards were presented at the afternoon session of the 2008 summer seminar
organised in association with the Sussex European Institute
at the University of Sussex

 

Award of the first François Duchêne Bursaries

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François Duchêne 1927-2005 François Duchêne who died in 2005 was an administrator, a policy analyst, an academic, a published poet, a keen musician and an enthusiast for a united Europe. He was present at the birth of modern integrated Europe as an assistant to Jean Monnet when he was setting up the European Coal and Steel Community, a precursor to and an inspiration for the European Union as we know it today. He was director of the International Institute for Strategic Studies, professor and Director of the Centre for European Studies and finally emeritus professor in the University of Sussex.
He was author of a hugely admired and influential biography of Jean Monnet†. He was an enthusiastic member of the European Movement and the Sussex branch in particular.

† Jean Monnet - The First Statesman of Interdependence
   W W Norton & Co, New York 1995   ISBN: 0393034976

Fuller accounts of François Duchêne's life:
The Independent      The Guardian


The François Duchêne Bursaries

The commemorative event on 23 May launched a Bursary set up in his memory to provide a contribution to travel and research expenses for Research Students of the University of Sussex in any discipline to:

blue_spot.gif (971 bytes)   Pursue field work in continental Europe connected with their thesis on issues of European Integration broadly construed or,
blue_spot.gif (971 bytes)   Contribute to a collaborative project in another European country and connected to their research.

This bursary has been set up with funding from Sussex European Institute, friends of François Duchêne and from members of the Sussex branch of the European Movement.  It is being administered by the Sussex European Institute.

In this first year no fewer than eight applicants for the Bursaries were submitted. Michael Rider, for the EM Sussex Branch, undertook to review the applications.  "I was genuinely very impressed with the quality of the applicants and spent a demanding weekend trying to decide on the respective merits of themes as diverse as integrating financial services across the EU, converging eldercare policies in the UK and Germany, the sub-text in the visual language of neglected baroque artefacts, the thrust of the EU’s policies towards its former eastern block neighbours, groundbreaking biotechnology processes in protein aggregation … and the rest. Fascinating!"

In the end three applications stood out, all from different departments of the University and submitted by three different nationalities.  The awards were presented by Claude Moraes, MEP.


continued in right-hand column

Claude Moraes and John Crossland


John Crossland is employed as a senior manager in social care by the City of Brighton & Hove. After gaining a BA in European Studies and German language at Lancaster, and subsequently other professionally orientated academic qualifications, with the full support of his employers he has committed to a part-time doctorate in the University of Sussex Department of Social Work and Social Care. He is undertaking a comparative investigation of the UK and German social care systems for older people. The new German social care reforms (Das Pflgeweiterentwicklungsgesetz!) have just been introduced; John identified key practitioners during an earlier spell in Berlin on a Volkswagen Fellowship, and proposes to spend his Bursary funds on four further visits to the city for in-depth interviews with his contacts. He will look in particular at the impact of the reforms on case management, and in his doctoral work assess mutual benefits from shared knowledge of the UK and German systems.

Ezel Tabur and Professor Jim Rollo


Ezel Tabur is from Turkey and has a BA in Social and Political Science from Istanbul. She has in addition an MA in European Studies from Budapest as well as a series of other academic awards. She is currently working on a D.Phil in Contemporary European Studies in the Sussex European Institute. Her research interest is in the EU’s decision making process in the field of its neighbourhood policies in relation to the eastern border states, and how these policies relate to migratory movements. She has experience of working on projects in Turkey looking at EU/Turkey integration, and is working part-time at the Sussex Centre for Migration Research. She has identified and is keen to interview key EU policy makers in Brussels and Berlin and will use her Bursary funds for this.


Malgorzata Sulimierska was not there to receive her award in person as she was the recipient of a prize at a conference in Lisbon, where she also gave two papers.  She is Polish and has a BA and MA in International Economics from Warsaw University. She has a second MA from the University of Sussex Department of Economics, and is now researching for a Sussex doctorate on the impact of current EU integration on productivity at the level of individual firms. She is currently attached to a research team based at the University of Louvain where she has unique access to a specialist database in her field. Her Bursary will enable her to undertake further visits to Belgium over the rest of this year; as a self-funding student Malgorzata would have found developing this crucial contact very difficult without these funds.

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