Europe comes to New York through the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies (CEMS)
Europe comes to New York through the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies (CEMS)
CEMS offers interdisciplinary degrees for undergraduate and graduate students, which allows students, faculty, and visiting scholars to explore the varied issues, histories, societies, and cultures of the continent. The study of Europe is as complex and exciting as the continent itself. By providing a forum for faculty fellows, visiting scholars, and research affiliates to delve into the past and present of Europe, CEMS provides innovative programming, courses, and mentoring to those affiliated with the Center.
Faculty Fellows / Visiting Assistant Professors
CEMS generally hosts two faculty fellows, who teach, advise, and mentor students, oversee master’s theses, organize public programs, and actively participate in shaping the life of the program. Faculty fellows are recent PhDs who come from a variety of disciplines that range from comparative politics and international relations to sociology and contemporary European history, and who focus on topical subjects such as the European Union; political, economic, and social developments in contemporary Europe; European foreign affairs; and identity and minorities in Europe. One fellow focuses on the Mediterranean, while the other specializes in other regions in Europe or on the European Union. Their three year terms mean that CEMS is continually invigorated by new research and programming. Faculty fellows contribute their networks to CEMS by way of speakers and topics, further expanding the Center’s foci, and regularly bringing students in contact with new ideas and avenues for scholarship and career possibilities.
Isabella Trombetta is a current visiting assistant professor at CEMS, and Emma Rosenberg, a faculty fellow. Dr. Trombetta’s areas of focus are migration and citizenship, Europe and the Mediterranean, and search and rescue. Having worked as a communications officer with the SAR NGO SOS MEDITERRANEE both on board the boat Aquarius and at the Italian headquarters of the NGO, Dr. Trombetta brings a practitioner’s perspective to her research and mentorship of CEMS students. Dr. Trombetta earned a PhD from the Università per Stranieri Dante Alighieri di Reggio Calabria in Global Studies and lends a migration focus to the study of the Mediterranean, complimenting the global view of her far-reaching areas of research.
Dr. Rosenberg is a comparativist, with a PhD in Political Science from the University of Notre Dame, who specializes in nationalism, religion, and politics, with regional expertise in Europe and the United States. From a Fulbright in Germany to on-the-ground experience in Chicago politics, her academic and professional experience spans the U.S. to Europe. She’s able to impart important professional development skills to both budding scholars pursuing further study after earning their master’s at CEMS and students who plan to go on to global careers after the completion of their studies.
Max-Weber-Chair for German and European Studies – Global Distinguished Professorship
The Max-Weber-Chair was established to promote the study of Germany and its relationship with Europe and the world. Co-funding for this chair is provided by the German Academic Exchange Service (Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst), with whom NYU works to select candidates. Max Weber Chairs are high profile, established academics from universities in Germany with an interdisciplinary focus on European studies. They spend between two and five years at the Center. During their tenure at NYU, Max-Weber-Chairs teach and mentor students, conduct research, and organize programming on Germany, engaging the Deutsches Haus at NYU and other German-focused departments and academics.
Past Max-Weber-Chairs have included Christiane Lemke-Dämpfling, Professor Emerita Leibniz University Hannover, Institute of Political Science, International Relations, and European Studies; Christine Landfried, Emeritus Professor of Political Science at the University of Hamburg; Christian Martin, Professor of Comparative Politics, Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel (University of Kiel); and Thomas Zittel, Professor for Comparative Politics at Goethe-University Frankfurt and External Fellow at the Mannheim Centre for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim.
Visiting Scholars / Research Affiliates
CEMS regularly hosts visiting scholars. Since 2023, the Center has proudly served as home-base for the Institut Ramon Llull-supported visiting professorship program in Catalan Studies. This is an annually-appointed guest lecturer, who adds a Catalan perspective to many of the global cultural issues CEMS engages with, including art, immigration, race, and other questions connected with European and Mediterranean identities. The inaugural visiting professor was Carles Guerra. Dr. Guerra was the director of the festival Primavera Fotogràfica de Catalunya, the Virreina Centre de la Imatge, and head curator of the Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). He presented a series of student-focused seminars at CEMS and NYU’s Museum Studies Program. He held a public lecture on Francesc Tosquelles, which featured a pre-event screening of Tosquelles’s films compiled by Dr. Guerra, and was the featured speaker during a roundtable discussion on “Museums and Cultural Diplomacy for the Twenty-First Century,” which included a screening of Roberto Rossellini’s last film, Beaubourg 1977.
In 2024, the Visiting Professor in Catalan Studies was Elvira Dyangani Ose. Dyangani Ose is currently the director of MACBA. While at CEMS, she held a public lecture at NYU’s Institute of Fine Arts, where she explored the evolving dynamics of anti-colonial practice in Barcelona through the lens of “Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica,” an international exhibition she is co-curating with Antawan I. Byrd, Adom Getachew, and Matthew S. Witkovsky. She also led a meet and greet with students of European and Mediterranean studies, museum studies, fine arts, and Spanish & Portuguese, and visited university classes, where she lectured.
CEMS is regularly contacted by scholars seeking to visit for varied timeframes, from one month to one year. These scholars come to NYU to gain access to the university’s wealth of resources and, at the same time, bring their own knowledge to students and others affiliated with the Center. Visiting scholars contribute to CEMS by sharing their research during the European Seminar Series and/or the Eastern Europe Workshop and through student mentorship. In addition to visiting scholars, CEMS also hosts research affiliates – master’s and doctoral students – who value time spent at NYU and New York City.
The regular flow of visitors to CEMS enrichens the learning environment, as evidenced by the varied topics and activities described above. Europe comes to NYC, and CEMS relishes the opportunity to be the host.
Author Bio
Melissa Graves, Center for European and Mediterranean Studies (CEMS)
