Federal Scholar in Residence Program

WHAT IS THE PROGRAM ABOUT?

The Federal Scholar in Residence Program addresses experts who wish to present and discuss questions of federalism, regionalism, and multi-level governance 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, regional, and multi-level studies. The program welcomes applications from scholars and practitioners who study and work in the fields of comparative federalism, local and regional autonomies, intergovernmental relations, and multi-level governance, as well as in language and fiscal policies, participatory governance, democratic innovations, constitutional resilience, and deliberative constitutionalism in multi-level systems. It was set up in honor of the works of Sergio Ortino, the founder of Federalism 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 in 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 multi-level 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 regarding formal requirements and the selection procedure below. For further inquiries, please contact us via email: federalscholar@eurac.edu.

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, February would be a particularly good time to develop new ideas while benefiting 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 Diversity Governance Papers, DiGoP, or one of our book series, if considered appropriate by the president of the jury
• a workplace and free access to the library, including online library services
• the use of our administrative structures (secretariat and project development service)
• travel tickets (economic fare)
• accommodation in a single room in a standard guesthouse 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 management team and to Eurac Research’s internal rules and regulations. In any case, neither board nor a family allowance can be provided.

Applicants must hand in an unpublished 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 management team by 01 July, 15:00 CEST at federalscholar@eurac.edu. Please note:

• the 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 ) will not have been published within two months following the deadline for submission."
• it has to be sent electronically and must not contain information that could identify the author
• the applicant's knowledge of English must be at working level
• only full papers are accepted, no research plans (there is, however, no rule concerning the length of the submitted work)); cross- and within-country comparisons are particularly welcome
• 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 as separate documents. Please read the privacy information notice
• applications must be submitted via email only (federalscholar@eurac.edu)

The program management team will reserve some days to check the accuracy of the applications received and then send a confirmation email. The program management team also reserves the right to reject applications that present a conflict of interest.

The program management team guarantees anonymity throughout the evaluation period (double-blind peer review process). Please note that it is NOT the program management team's responsibility to strip any information that could identify the author from the manuscript before submitting it to the jury for review. Manuscripts that contain 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 and how to continue the exchange with the Institute for Comparative Federalism also beyond the duration of the research stay. For instance, it may include a project idea aligned with the Institute's research fields. Neither the biographical information nor the motivation letter will be passed on 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 management team reserve the right to decide whether to grant the research stay to the person ranked second or not to award the Federal Scholar in Residence position at all. The motivation letter and biographical information are taken into consideration in such cases. In the 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 the end of October. Any contact of applicants with the program management team is forbidden during the selection procedure.

JURY AND SELECTION CRITERIA

The program management team 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 range of comparative federalism, regionalism, and multi-level governance research, from legal, political, social, and economic perspectives. 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 from the program management team. The jury members' work and deliberations are strictly confidential, and any contact with the president of the jury is not permitted during the evaluation procedure.

The program management team will contact the winner by mid-October at the latest. The winner will also be announced on Eurac Research's web page and the Institute’s social media channels.

NOTE: During the selection process, no emails will be answered by the program management team or the jury’s president. For general inquiries about the program before the submission deadline, 01 July, please email federalscholar@eurac.edu.