Britain and Europe 2.0

Between September 2019 and August 2023, we published 186 blog pieces on the UCL Europe Blog - a go-to source for research-informed, accessible commentary on European and UK affairs. They were viewed over 133k times.

This blog is the successor of the first university-hosted blog on the Britain-Europe relationship (supported by a 2014 Jean Monnet Project), later the successful UCL Brexit blog.

Uta Staiger edited, with Robert Schütze of Durham University, the special issue of Global Policy on Brexit – Past, Present and Future, prepared by a couple of webinars.

Half a decade after the referendum, the authors set out to consider Brexit from a wide diachronic perspective to examine not only its complicated present, but also its past and possible future(s). 

One-off videos, such as What happens next? UK and EU responses to the 2019 election (17/12/20219), exploring the vote's implications for Brexit, as well as our series In Search of Europe, featuring five-minute video interviews with UCL researchers giving insights into their ongoing or recent projects, from Venetian opera to the politicisation of opera.

The UCL Brexit Hub was UCL's portal for research, academic content and expertise on all things Brexit. The UCL European Institute updated it regularly with the latest comment and analysis, between 2016-2020. 

Many of our podcasts had a focus on the EU. Here are some highlights: 

- Michael Shackleton: Collecting memories of the European Parliament 15/12/2020
- States of Emergency: Liberty, Authority and the Law 04/05/2020
- Life in the Time of Coronavirus 17/04/2020
- Hungary, COVID19 and the Rule of Law 07/04/2020
- How has COVID-19 affected Brexit? Oct 2020
- COVID-19, Brexit and the EU's Response 27/03/ 2020

2019-2023, 25 of our public, policy- or student-facing events had a Brexit or distinct EU focus, not least the nine webinars of the UCL European Politics series we convened in 2020-21. Highlights:

- Was Brexit a British aberration? 15/10/2020
- Reluctant European: Britain and the EU from 1945 to Brexit 22/10/2020 
- Resilience in European Supply Chains: Brexit, COVID-19 and what the future holds 12/01/2021
- European Perspectives on Brexit: not a Love Story 4 March 2021
- Flexible Europe: Differentiated Integration, Fairness and Democracy 10/03/2022
- How to Strengthen EU Democracy and Rule of Law in the Face of Backsliding? 15/03/2022
- The EU-UK Relationship in a Changing World 27/04/2022
- Competition vs. cooperation in times of crisis: reimagining European collaborations 16/03/2022
- The European Parliament and Transnational Democracy with Klaus Welle 08/03/2023