Michael E Smith tells Rebecca Hill how researching the European Union's foreign policy helped him win a €1-million (£834,000) Starting Grant from the European Research Council.
What is the focus of your research?
I study international cooperation in difficult areas, such as monetary affairs, security and foreign policy. Most of my work involves the most powerful countries, which are mainly advanced industrial democracies, so the EU is an obvious candidate. This was the topic of my dissertation, which became my PhD thesis and then my first book, Europe’s Foreign and Security Policy: The institutionalization of cooperation, so I’ve been looking at this topic for more than 15 years now. I was, in fact, planning to move on from the issue of EU foreign policy, but when the ERC Starting Grant programme began, I realised I might have an opportunity to build on what I’d done.
This article on Research Professional News is only available to Research Professional or Pivot-RP users.
Research Professional users can log in and view the article via this link
Pivot-RP users can log in and view the article via this link.