Professor Sophie Vanhoonacker

Special Chair in Administrative Governance

Sophie Vanhoonacker is Jean Monnet Professor and has a special chair in Administrative Governance at the Department of Politics at the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University Maastricht.

Within the Maastricht European Studies programme (Ba. and Ma.), she teaches courses on the history and theories of European integration; European Foreign Policy (EFP), and on the role of civil servants in a system of multi-level governance. In addition she also supervises Bachelor papers and master theses related to these topics.

Currently the main focus of her research is on the role and influence of non-elected administrative actors on the European foreign policy process. She is particularly interested in the processs of ' Brusselisation' or 'the steady enhancement of the Brussels-based decision-making bodies' in the area of CFSP.

Prior to her position at the UM she was a faculty member of the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA), Maastricht (NL) where she was part of the unit 'European Governance and Policy Processes' (1987 - 2001) . At EIPA she was involved in training of civil servants on policymaking in the EU and on the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). In the period 1996-2001 she was involved in preparing EU Member States for the Presidency of the Council of the EU.

Sophie Vanhoonacker holds a PhD from Leiden university (1999). She studied history (Catholic Universtiy of Leuven, 1984), European Studies (College of Europe, Bruges, 1985) and International Relations (Université Libre de Bruxelles, 1989). Her PhD focused on the reaction of the Bush Administration vis-`a vis the development of a European security identity and has been published by Ashgate Publishers (2001).

Keywords

European integration, Common Foreign and Security Policy; European Security and Defence Policy, Administrative Governance