University of St. Gallen
The Center for Governance and Culture in Europe (GCE) deals with the cultural foundations of political and social developments in Europe.The GCE analyses the social, economic, political and cultural transformation and Europeanization processes from an interdisciplinary and transnational perspective.
Operating with a broad understanding of Europe, involving the Council of Europe with its 47 member states, the GCE seeks to capture the concept of Europe in all its diversity. A central feature of the GCE approach is the combination of governance and culture as two building blocks central for social ordering. On the one hand, the focus on governance involves the analysis of the formation, development and regulation of collective issues through means of structures, processes and actors. On the other hand, culture comprises human perception, interpretation and shaping of social reality. Forms of thought and attributions of meaning shape the development of culture, while cultural ideas and practices such as memories and identities shape forms of governance.
Prof. Dr. Dirk Lehmkuhl holds the chair for European Politics at the University of St. Gallen. He achieved his PhD at the European University in Florence and was Senior Research Fellow at the Max Planck Institute for the Research of Collective Goods and at the Institute of Political Science at the University of Zurich. His research portfolio includes public policy issues of European Integration, European external governance, comparative regional integration and the legalization of international politics. He is academic director of the BA and MA programs in International Affairs and Governance. In 2011, he co-founded the Center for Governance and Culture in Europe at the University of St. Gallen. Prof. Lehmkuhl is the project coordinator of ISSICEU.
Dr. Katharina Hoffmann is a researcher at the Center for Governance and Culture in Europe at the University of St. Gallen. Her contribution to ISSICEU is a post-doc project on hybrid political regimes and their manifestation in communal governance in Armenia and Azerbaijan. Katharina is affiliated to the University of Birmingham for her PhD thesis on regional organisations in the post-Soviet space. Her PhD research devotes attention to the foreign policy of Azerbaijan in the context of regional organisations. She received her Magister degree in East European Studies from Freie Universität Berlin.
Maria Shagina is a PhD Candidate at the University of Lucerne and NCCR Democracy (University of Zurich). Her dissertation project focuses on the Europeanization of party politics in the non-EU member states (Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine). Funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation, she has spent 9 months as a PhD visiting researcher at CREES, University of Birmingham. Her MA degree in Social Sciences she received from the University of Dusseldorf. Within the ISSICEU project, she will be working as a project assistant, dealing with administrative and organizational issues.
Petra Hertkorn has been working for the University of St. Gallen since 2000. Within the Research Promotion Service of the university, she is responsible for European Research and Innovation Programmes together with her colleague Christine Poupa. She has supported the ISSICEU project during the proposal and negociation phase in financial, administrative and legal issues.
Dr. Christine Poupa participated as researcher in EU projects from FP4 (the 4th Framework Programme) onwards. She has been working for the University of St. Gallen since 2003. Within the Research Promotion Service of the university, she is Advisor for European Research & Innovation. She will support the ISSICEU project in financial, administrative and legal issues.
Arman Melkonyan is currently working as a data analyst at the Youth Studies Institute in Armenia and as a data manager at the Center for Educational Research and Consulting. He has conducted research on a wide range of areas: socio-economic conditions in Armenian regions, political structure of Armenia, migration, youth employment, higher education, media and market research. He has also worked for different local and international organizations in Armenia, such as the Caucasus Research Resource Center Armenia as a program manager for data initiative and methodological trainings and for the Institute for Political and Sociological Consulting as a Data Manager. Arman holds an MA in Sociology from the Yerevan State University. Within the ISSICEU project, Arman is currently involved in comparative research on formal and informal mechanisms for governance at local level in the South Caucasus as the Armenian research assistant to Dr. Katharina Hoffmann.