Vivien A. Schmidt

Vivien A. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Professor Emerita of International Relations in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies, Professor Emerita of Political Science, and Founding Director of the Center for the Study of Europe at Boston University, where she taught from 1998 to 2023.  Prof. Schmidt is currently Visiting Fellow in the Robert Schuman Center at the European University Institute in Florence, Honorary Professor at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome, and Senior Fellow at the Zoe Institute in Cologne and Brussels. She received her B. A. cum laude from Bryn Mawr College, her M.A. and Ph.D from the University of Chicago, and also attended Sciences Po, Paris.

Schmidt has also held appointments as Professor of Political Science and Professor of Management at the University of Massachusetts/Boston, where she founded the European Studies Program and led the Center for democracy and Development in the McCormack Institute for Public Affairs. She has additionally been a visiting professor at numerous European universities, including over a decade each at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome and at Sciences Po in Paris, as well shorter stints at the Free University in Brussels, Utrecht University, Copenhagen Business School and Roskilde University in Denmark, the European University Institute in Florence, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, IMT Institute for Advanced Studies in Lucca, the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, and the Universities of Paris and Lille. She has additionally been visiting scholar at the Free University of Berlin, Cambridge University, Warwick University, Nuffield College, Oxford University, and at Harvard University’s Center for European Studies, where she was a long-time affiliate and co-chair of the European Union Seminar from 2008 to 2023.

Professor Schmidt’s areas of scholarly interest are situated at the intersection of political theory, comparative politics, and international relations.  Her specific areas of expertise include European political economy, European Union institutions, democracy and the challenges of populism, and political theory (most notably on the role of ideas and discourse in political analysis–‘discursive institutionalism’).  She has published fourteen books and eight symposium issues of refereed journals, over three hundred chapters in books and in refereed journal articles as well as over five hundred presentations of her work in a wide range of venues—academic, policy-related, and general public.  

Schmidt’s latest single-authored book is The Power of Ideas and Discourse in Political Analysis: A Discursive Institutionalist Perspective (Oxford 2026). Her previous book, Europe’s Crisis of Legitimacy: Governing by Rules and Ruling by Numbers in the Eurozone (Oxford, 2020), received the Best Book Award (2021) of the American Political Science Association’s Ideas, Knowledge, Politics section  and Honorable Mention for the Best Book Award (2019-2020) of the European Union Studies Association. She is also the author of Democracy in Europe (Oxford 2006; French translation, La Découverte 2010), which was named in 2015 by the European Parliament as one of the ‘100 Books on Europe to Remember;’ The Futures of European Capitalism (Oxford 2002); From State to Market? The Transformation of French Business and Government (Cambridge l996); and Democratizing France (Cambridge l990), which received Honorable Mention at the Gaston Defferre Prize Ceremony in Marseilles (1992).  Schmidt’s co-edited books include Governance and Politics in the Post-Crisis European Union (co-eds. R. Coman and A. Crespy—Cambridge 2020), The European Union’s Engagement with Transnational Policy Networks (co-eds. S. Kingah and W. Yong—Routledge, 2016), Resilient Liberalism in Europe’s Political Economy (co-ed. M. Thatcher—Cambridge 2013), Debating Political Identity and Legitimacy in the European Union (co-eds. S. Lucarelli and F. Cerutti—Routledge, 2010), Public Discourse and Welfare State Reform (V. Schmidt et al.—Mets & Schilt, 2005), Policy Change and Discourse in Europe (co-ed. C. Radaelli– Routledge 2005), Welfare and Work in the Open Economy (co-author vol. 1, co-ed. vol. 2, Fritz W. Scharpf—Oxford 2000).  Her articles have been published in refereed journal articles such as the Annual Review of Political Science, European Political Science Review, World Politics, Governance, Review of International Political Economy, Political Studies, West European Politics, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, Stato e Mercato, Revue Française de Science Politique, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Critical Policy Studies, and Daedalus. 

Recent honors and awards include election as a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; decoration as a Chevalier in the French Legion of Honor; recipient of the European Union Studies Association Lifetime Achievement Award; and recipient of the SWIPE award for mentoring women, conferred by the International Political Economy section of the International Studies Association. Earlier awards include an honorary doctorate from the Free University of Brussels (ULB), the Franqui Interuniversity Chair (the most prestigious award in Belgium for foreign scholars), and a Jean Monnet Chair (granted by the European Union Commission). She was also decorated by the French government as a Chevalier in the Order of the Palmes Académiques, and honored by the University of Massachusetts Boston with the Distinguished Scholar Award.

Among her recent research fellowships is a Guggenheim Fellowship for a project on the “rhetoric of discontent,” in which she extends her comparative work to the US in a transatlantic investigation of the populist revolt against globalization (and Europeanization) and a Research Fellowship from the European Commission, DG ECFIN. She has also been Visiting Research Scholar at the Free University Berlin, at the French National Research Council in Paris, and the Rockefeller Center at Bellagio; received a Volkswagen Foundation grant held at the Max Planck Institute, Cologne; and held Fulbright Fellowships at Oxford University, the University of Paris, and a Fulbright-Hays pre-dissertation fellowship held at Sciences Po, Paris.

As for major collaborative research grants, Schmidt was the lead member for BU of the EU Commission Horizon research project ENLIGHTEN (European Legitimacy in Governing through Hard Times) and for the EU Commission FP7 research project ‘GR:EEN’ (Global Re-ordering: Evolution through European Networks) as well as co-investigator on the Horizon Europe grants such as REGROUP (2022-2025). She also participated as a member of the advisory boards of EU Commission collaborative research grants, including RECONNECT (2018-2022), EU-IDEA (2019-2022) and RED-SPINELL (2022-2025). In addition, she received a European Science Foundation Grant, plus numerous home university-sourced grants.

With regard to major institutional grants, Prof. Schmidt was director and principal investigator for three substantial EU Commission Delegation grants for series of public lectures by writers and artists (Getting to Know Europe), as well as the recipient of Commission Delegation funding for the creation of a European Studies program at BU and earlier, at UMASS Boston. Schmidt was also lead member for BU as part of the EU Commission Global Erasmus Mundus Grant for a joint doctoral program, and sits on the advisory board of its successor GEM-DIAMOND.

Professor Schmidt is past head of the European Union Studies Association-USA. She is or has been on the advisory boards of a number of organizations, including the International Institute for Peace; the Foundation for European Progressive Studies; the Institute for European Studies, Brussels Free University; the Wissenschaft Zentrum Berlin (2014-2022); and the Boston Council on Foreign Relations (2013-2024). She is on numerous editorial boards, including Review of International Political Economy, Comparative European Politics, West European Politics, Journal of European Integration, Critical Policy Studies, Policy Studies, Social Europe Journal, Critique Internationale, Contemporary Italian Politics, Rivista Italiana di Politiche Pubbliche, Post (Italian online), and Revista Universitaria Europa (Spanish).

At BU, Vivien Schmidt is the founding Director of the Center for the Study of Europe (2011 through 2016), and previously directed the Center for International Relations. She was also founding Director of the European Studies program at UMass as well as Director of the Center for Democracy and Development of the McCormack Institute of Public Affairs, where she initiated grant programs focused on Francophone Africa and Southern Africa.

Prof. Schmidt consults widely on issues related to European governance, democracy, and political economy.  Her policy inputs in government venues include the EU Commission (DG ECFIN); the European Central Bank; the European Parliament; the French National Assembly, Foreign Affairs Committee; the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Directorate of European Integration; and US government agencies. In addition, she has been keynote speaker, paper presenter, or panelist for think-tanks and foundations, including the Center for European Policy Studies (CEPS), Brussels; the Swedish Institute for European Policy Studies; the Friedrich Ebert-Stiftung, Berlin; the Renner Institute, Vienna; the Getulio Vargas Foundation, Rio; CEPAL, Santiago Chile; the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (FEPS), Brussels; the Istituto degli Affari Internazionali (IAI), Rome; ELIAMEP, Athens; the Bruno Kreisky Foundation, Vienna; the Watson Institute, Brown University; the German Marshall Fund; IFRI (French Institute for International Relations) Paris and Brussels; the Kalevi Sorsa Foundation, Helsinki; the Netherlands Institute of International Relations ‘Clingendael’; the Ditchley Foundation, Oxford; Egmont Institute, Brussels; CSIS—Center for Strategic and International Studies, Wash. D.C.; and the Korean Development Institute.

Finally, while English is her native language, she has native fluency in Italian (having lived in Milan, Italy from ages 8 to 16) and French (having attended a French lycée in Milan and later attended Sciences Po Paris), and has knowledge of Spanish and German. In addition, she is an accomplished fine art photographer, with solo exhibitions in Boston (at Harvard’s Center for European Studies and the Italian Consulate of Boston), New York, Florence, Italy, and Menton, France (see her photo website at http://www.vivienschmidt.com).