Teaching activities

The European Civilization Chair contributes actively to the academic programme of the European Interdisciplinary Studies at the College of Europe in Natolin.

At the start of the academic year, the Chairholder teaches a course to all students: "History of European Civilization". This course epitomizes the role of European History and Civilization as a foundation of the Natolin experience. He also offers a simulation game on the Paris Peace conference of 1919 – connecting to the "Breaking Empires, Making Nations?" research theme. In the second semester he contributes a course "Geopolitics and Diplomacy from Constantinople to Rome (1453-1957)", which features a simulation game of the 1814-15 Congress of Vienna.

The Chair is at the heart of the second semester major "European History and Civilization", whose courses are available to all students. Among the visiting professors are some of the world’s leading historians. Assessed courses on big subjects are complimented by Masterclasses, compact seminars and workshops. The latter, led by postdoctoral fellows of the Max Weber Programme at the European University Institute in Florence, are new each year. The Chair also contributes to the planning and delivery of study visits.

Alongside other members of the Faculty, the Chairholder supervises Master’s theses in diverse aspects of European History and Civilization.

Each year the Chair honours the outstanding student in its field. To date these have been:

  • 2014-2015: Mr Przemysław PAZIK, Radicalism, Revolution and Romanticism: The Ideological Response of Polish Catholic Intellectuals to Communist Rule in Poland 1945–1948
  • 2015-2016: Mr Benjamin CROME, Towards a New Canaan? European Identity in the Light of the Zionist Right, 1929-1931
  • 2016-2017: Mr Radosław SZYMAŃSKI, Rousseau’s Unitary Federal State in the Eyes of Michał Wielhorski
  • 2017-2018: Ms Laura WHETHERLY, 'It’s Their Bloody Country': Opportunities and Obstacles for Cooperation between SOE and Insurgent Armies in Yugoslavia and Greece, 1941-1945
  • 2018-2019 (ex-aequo): Mr Thomas BARKER, Development through Social Movements: To what Extent did Ukraine’s Euromaidan Succeed, where the Orange Revolution Failed? Based on an Examination of Thirty-Nine Published Interviews of the College of Europe’s Three Revolutions Project (Natolin), and Ms Louise VALLEDOR, Les insurrections de l’été 1944 : Paris et Varsovie, une perspective sociohistorique
  • 2019-2020: Mr Grzegorz SZYMBORSKI, The Duchy of Courland and Semigallia between the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth and the Russian Empire. Legal Aspects of Charles Christian Wettin’s Reign and the Succession to the Throne in Courland in the Eighteenth Century