Allons voter !
Join us at the Alliance Française for an insightful discussion on the upcoming elections to the European Parliament (EP)!
In June 2024, EU citizens will choose the 705 members of the European Parliament from 27 countries who will serve for 5 years. Popular participation in the elections has been declining since the first popular election in 1979. Why? One reason is lack of information.
You will get answers to the following questions: How did the EP change from being an irrelevant sounding board in the 1950s to becoming a powerful legislative assembly today? What does the EP do and why does it matter? Examples. How is it led? How is that the EP has both given a platform to populist anti-EU leaders such as French Marine Le Pen and British advocate of Brexit Nigel Farage and supported pro-EU opponents of illiberal leaders in Poland and Hungary?
A Q & A session will follow the presentations of Professors Guisan, Petzschmann and Lorentz!
About the speakers
Catherine Guisan is a US citizen, raised in a French-speaking Swiss family with Greek Ottoman roots. After 25 years of non-profit work on 3 continents, she got her PhD in Political Science at the University of Minnesota, where she is Visiting Associate Professor. She is the author of Un sens à l’Europe: Gagner la Paix (1950-2003) (Odile Jacob, 2003) and A Political Theory of Identity in European Integration: Memory and policies (Routledge, 2011), and many articles. She is writing a new book, Making and Unmaking Peace in Europe (Agenda, 2025).
She has taught at the University of Minnesota, in French, and Dutch universities, and as a Fulbright scholar at European University, St Petersburg, 2013. She returned to Russia for lectures on behalf of the U.S. State Department’s Speaker Program in 2016. She is a past president of Alliance française, Twin Cities, and has held leadership positions in the American Political Science Association on behalf of contingent faculty (2016-2023).
For more info on the EP, see in public access: Catherine Guisan, “Right-Wing Populism and the European Parliament’s Agonistic Politics,” Populism, 2022. https://brill.com/view/journals/popu/5/1/article-p48_3.xml
Paul Petzschmann is a citizen of both Germany and the United States. Born and raised in East Berlin he received his DPhil from Oxford University before spending time researching and teaching in Norway at the Norwegian Institute of International Affairs and at the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Since 2011 he has been teaching at Carleton College where he is the Director of European Studies. A political theorist he is teaching widely on European politics and political history. He has contributed to numerous journals such as Public Administration Review and to several edited collections, most recently to Richard Ned Lebow and Ludvig Norman’s Robustness and Fragility of Political Orders. Leader Assessments, Responses, and Consequences with Cambridge University Press in 2022 and Jens Steffek and Leonie Holthaus’ From Huns to Peaceniks: Germany in International Relations with Manchester University Press in 2020.
Romain Lorentz was born and raised in France, near Orléans. He earned his J.D. from the Université d'Orléans, and his LL.M and Doctorate in Comparative Law from the Universités Panthéon-Sorbonne/Assas, where he taught American Law for a couple of years. Shortly after moving permanently to the Twin Cities in 2005, Romain joined the University of St Thomas Opus College of Business, where he still teaches Business Law. Romain is a visiting professor at the Université de Strasbourg and a consultant in US compliance with a French firm. He contributed to many publications in France, the U.K., and the U.S., including “Who owns employee works? Pitfalls in a globally distributed work environment” in Managing the Legal Nexus Between Intellectual Property and Employees in Domestic and Global Contexts by L. J. Oswald and M. A. Pagnatarro (Eds.) (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2015 (co-authored with S. Marsnik)) and “The Use of Comparative Law in Birth-Related Tort Cases”, in Courts and Comparative Law by Andenas, M. and Fairgrieve, D. (Eds.) (Oxford University Press, 2015). Romain Lorentz is the Chair of the Board of Directors of Notre Ecole French Immersion and STEAM School in Golden Valley, a member of the Board of Directors of the Alliance Française and a co-host of Bonjour Minnesota on KFAI Radio.
This event is free with a $10 suggested donation to support our cultural programs. Merci pour votre soutien !