AIM

WHAT IS THE PROGRAM ABOUT?

The Federal Scholar in Residence addresses experts who wish to present and discuss questions of federalism and regionalism that are of importance to legislators, civil servants and the international academic community. It promotes comparative research at Eurac Research and aims to interconnect experts and their networks in order to advance comparative federal and regional studies.

The program welcomes applications from scholars and practitioners who study and work in the fields of federalism, regionalism and intergovernmental relations. It was set up in honor of the works of Sergio Ortino, the founder of Federal Studies in South Tyrol.

In short, the Federal Scholar in Residence Program is:

• a public acknowledgement of excellence covering the costs of a research stay at the Institute for Comparative Federalism
• a possibility to present own research findings publicly and engage into face-to-face discussions with a group of international experts in constitutional law and comparative politics at Eurac Research
• an occasion for academics, post-docs and practitioners to extend and share their knowledge of multilevel government and governance in the South Tyrolean setting, a trilingual Italian autonomous province bordering Switzerland and Austria
  
• an opportunity to develop new project ideas while being part of our international research environment

Please find all information as to formal requirements and selection procedure below. For further inquiries please contact us via email. ​​

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PROGRAM

WHAT DOES THE PROGRAM OFFER?

The winner of the Federal Scholar in Residence program is granted a research stay of up to 3 weeks at the Institute for Comparative Federalism. Although the winner can flexibly plan their stay, the month of February would represent a particular opportunity to develop new ideas while profiting from the international research environment of the renowned Winter School on Federalism and Governance.

The program comprises:

• The possibility to present and to publish one's work in our online series EDAP or one of our book series, if considered appropriate by the president of the jury
• A work place and free access to the Library, including online library services
• The use of our administrative structures (secretariat and project development service)
• A return ticket economic fare
• Accommodation in a single room in a standard guesthouse or in modern student halls of residence in centrally located areas of Bolzano/Bozen (within walking distance to Eurac Research)

NOTE: The single conditions are subject to prior agreement with the project manager and to Eurac Research’s internal rules of procedure. In any case, neither board nor a family allowance will be provided.

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FORMAL REQUIREMENTS

Applicants must hand in a not yet published manuscript and be ready to present their findings in English in seminars both at Eurac Research and at neighboring partner universities.

Applications are to be sent directly to the program manager by 01 July, 15:00 CEST. Please note:

• an unpublished paper or manuscript can be submitted in English, German, Italian, French and Spanish; in accordance to the program's rules it is compulsory to insert the following declaration as a footnote in the submitted manuscript OR as a separate certification (with your signature): "I hereby confirm that the submitted work ( TITLE ) is not yet published."
• it has to be sent electronically and without any identifying information in it
• the applicant's knowledge of English must be at working level
• only full papers are accepted, no research plans (there is no rule concerning the length of the submitted work)
• a paper or manuscript can only be re-submitted if substantially revised
• an abstract in English, a short CV and a motivation letter of maximum 2 pages have to be sent in a separate document; in accordance to regulations on personal data handling make sure to attach the following consent to your CV: "I read the privacy information notice available at http://www.eurac.edu/en/aboutus/Jobs/Pages/default.aspx and authorize Eurac Research to use my personal data in accordance to Italian decree 196/2003 and EU Regulation 679/2016."
• applications must be submitted via email only

The Program manager will reserve some days to check the accuracy of the received application and then sent a confirmation email.

The program manager guarantees anonymity throughout the evaluation period (double-blind peer review process).The paper or manuscript has to be sent without any identifying information in it. Please note that it is NOT the program manager's responsibility to strip any identifying information from the manuscript before handing it over to the jury's president. Unpublished manuscripts containing identifying information will simply be rejected. The same goes for incomplete applications.

The motivation letter should contain information on how the applicant intends to use his/her time at Eurac Research. For instance, it can contain a project idea in line with the Institute's research fields. Both biographical information and motivation letter will not be transmitted to the jury. They are essential for the preparatory phase of the program and in case of victory, but do not count for the selection process itself.

The winner will be contacted by mid-October at the latest. If the person ranked first is no longer interested in the program, the president of the jury and the program manager reserve the right to decide whether to grant the research stay to the person ranked second or not to awards the Federal Scholar in Residence position at all. Motivation letter and biographical information are taken into consideration in such cases. In absence of good applications, the jury's president reserves the right not to award the grant.

All candidates will in any case receive a short notice by mid-October. Any contact of applicants with the program manager is forbidden during the selection procedure.

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SELECTION PROCEDURE

JURY AND SELECTION CRITERIA

The program manager forwards the unpublished manuscripts to both Professor Francesco Palermo, President of the international jury and Director of the Institute for Comparative Federalism​, and to the yearly jury members.

Depending on the submitted topic and the language of the paper or manuscript, experts and senior scholars are nominated from a pool of outstanding international experts. Their range of expertise covers the whole of comparative federalism, regionalism and intergovernmental research, from legal, political, social and economic perspective. The members of the jury are asked to evaluate the submitted works against the following criteria:

• innovation and creativity (significant originality and initiative)
• content (overall quality, clarity and long term scientific value for comparative federal research)
• practical usefulness (consequentiality for institutional, political, social and economic reality)
• strategic value (relevance for efficient multilevel governance and institutional reforms)
• reliability (referring to the problem framing and, if applicable, to data collection methods)
• replicability (applying to data and broadly speaking to the entire reasoning process)
• methodological effectiveness (clear demonstration on how the work is consonant in its source disciplines/methodologies or on how the work effectively advances the understanding and inquiry of the submitted topic by weaving disciplinary perspectives together and developing novel methodological approaches that are balanced)

Please note that the jury's president and its members will receive the candidates' applications anonymously by the program manager. The jury members' work and deliberations are strictly confidential and any contact with the president of the jury is not permitted during the evaluation procedu​re.

The program manager will contact the winner by mid-October at the latest. The winner will also be announced on ​Eurac Research's web page and in the Institute's newsletter.

NOTE: During the selection process no emails will be answered by the program manager or the jury’s president. For general inquiries on the program before the deadline of submission, 01 July, please send an email.

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PREVIOUS EDITIONS

WINNER 2017

Prof. André Lecours (University of Ottawa, Canada)

The International Jury of the fifth edition of the Federal Scholar in Residence Programme has awarded the prize to Professor André Lecours, faculty member of the School of Political Studies at the University of Ottawa, Canada. His manuscript “Federalism and State responses to Nationalist Movements in Spain, Belgium, Canada, and the United Kingdom: Approaches and Outcomes” has been ranked first among all received applications. André Lecours holds a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in Political Science from the University of Laval and a PhD in Political Science from Carleton University. Before his appointment at the University of Ottawa in 2009, he was Associate Professor of Political Science at Concordia University. He has also held a variety of non-academic positions, among them Senior Policy Advisor at the Privy Council Office for Intergovernmental Affairs. His research interests include Canadian politics, comparative politics, European politics, nationalism, federalism and institutionalist theory.

WINNER 2016

Dr. Karlo Basta (Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada)

The International Jury of the fourth edition of the Federal Scholar in Residence Programme has awarded the prize to Dr. Karlo Basta, faculty member at the Department of Political Science, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St John’s, Canada. Before joining Memorial University, he was lecturer in the Department of Political Science of the University of Toronto for three years. His winning submission was the manuscript “Towards a Positive Theory of Multinational Federalism: Identifying Gaps in the Scholarship and Pointing to Future Lines of Inquiry”. Dr. Basta holds a BA from York University and an MA and PhD from the University of Toronto. His work examines the origins and impact of federal institutions in plural societies. Further research interests include comparative politics, ethnic conflict, nationalism, political economy, European politics and political institutions. Together with John McGarry and Richard Simeon, he edited Territorial Pluralism: Managing Difference in Multinational States (UBC Press, 2015). Dr. Basta presented his research in a public lecture during the "Winter School on Federalism and Governance: Conflict and Cooperation in Federal Systems". Please consult our newsletter (spring issue 2016) to read an editorial written by Dr. Basta.

WINNER 20​​1​5

Prof. James Gardner (SUNY Buffalo Law School, USA)

The International Jury of the third edition of the Federal Scholar has awarded the prize to Professor James Gardner, faculty member at SUNY Buffalo Law School. His manuscript "Distinctive Identity Claims in Federal Systems: Judicial Policing of Subnational Variance" has been ranked first among all received applications. James Gardner received his B.A. from Yale University in 1980 and his J.D. from the University of Chicago in 1984. From 1984 to 1988, he practiced law in the Civil Division of the U.S. Department of Justice in Washington, D.C. Before joining the faculty at SUNY Buffalo Law School in 2001, he taught at Western New England University, William and Mary, and the University of Connecticut. Since then, he has been a visiting professor at Florida State University, and in 2012 he held the Fulbright Visiting Research Chair in the Theory and Practice of Constitutionalism and Federalism at McGill University in Montreal. Gardner's research interests include the constitutional structure of politics, the institutionalization through law of principles of democracy, comparative and American federalism, and subnational constitutional law. Please consult our newsletter (spring issue 2015) to read an editorial written by Prof. James Gardner.

WINNER 2014

Prof. Andrew Hughes Hallett (George Mason University, USA; University of St Andrews, UK)

The International Jury of the second edition of the Federal Scholar has awarded the prize to Prof. Andrew Hughes Hallett, University Professor for Economics and Public Policy at George Mason University (USA) and Professor of Economics at the University of St Andrews (Scotland). His manuscript “The Practicalities of Economic Federalism: A Critical review of How to Apply the Lessons of Fiscal Autonomy in Practice” has been ranked first among all received applications. The principal theme of his paper is to elaborate a model of fiscal federalism where comprehensive powers over taxation and spending are devolved, but remain consistent within a union-wide macro-economic framework and constitutional integrity. He concentrates on the case of the UK and more specifically on Scotland.
Prof. Hughes Hallett has taught in over 15 Universities in Europe and in the U.S. He is ranked in the top 1% of economists world-wide (295 out of 34.280) by publications, citations and readership. Beyond the academic world, Prof. Hughes Hallett is consultant to the Fiscal Affairs division of the European Central Bank on debt management and lead economist in the working group set up to design the policy framework for autonomy/independence for Scotland after the referendum in 2014. He has acted as consultant to the World Bank and the IMF as well as for the Federal Reserve in Washington, the Peterson Institute for International Economics and to the UN, UNESCO, OECD and to various governments and central banks in Europe.
Please consult our newsletter (spring issue 2014) to read an editorial written by Prof. Hughes Hallett.

WINNER 2013

Dr. Donna E. Wood (University of Victoria, CAN)

The international Jury of the first edition of the “Federal Scholar in Residence Program” has awarded the prize to Dr. Donna E. Wood, postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Political Science at the University of Victoria. In her research work, she compares how Canada and the European Union govern social policy. Her manuscript “Could European Governance Ideas Improve Federal-Provincial Relations in Canada – the case study of employment policies” has been ranked first among all received applications, with respect to its originality, replicability and methodological effectiveness. Dr. Wood has also worked over 25 years for the Government of Alberta and the Government of the Northwest Territories, providing policy advice and directing provincial/territorial income support, social services, apprenticeship, training and labor market programs.

Donna E. Wood presented her research findings in a public lecture within the frame of the Eurac Research’s Winter School on Federalism and Governance. Please consult our newsletter (spring issue 2013)or Eurac Research’s scientific magazine “Academia” (no. 61) if you wish to read more on Donna E. Wood’s research stay at EURAC. Moreover, Donna E. Wood published some of her research findings in our online series European Autonomy and Diversity Papers (EDAP No. 06/2013). Here you can read a report of Donna E. Wood on here stay at Eurac Research​ and in other European countries (Canada-Europe transatlantic dialogue webpage). We wish you a happy reading!

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