EU Public Diplomacy & Outreach in NZ: Increasing the EU’s Visibility in NZ

The EU-NZ Free Trade Agreement (FTA). Negotiations towards the FTA were launched on 21 June 2018.

Dr Maria Garcia, University of Bath, United Kingdom
Maria has been researching and teaching EU integration and EU trade policy for eight years. She specialises on the politics of EU trade agreement negotiations, the inclusion of social clauses in trade agreements, and regulatory exports through trade agreements. She is co-editor of the first Handbook on EU and International Trade (2018, Edward Elgar), and co-convenor of the GIFTA network of scholars working on trade agreements (www.giftaproject.org). She is the lead in a GW4 project studying the impact of the UK’s withdrawal from the EU on the trade policy needs of businesses. She has provided expert evidence on trade agreements implementation and negotiation to the European Parliament, Welsh Assembly and UK Parliament. She has experience communicating EU trade policy to non-academic audiences (in the media and public seminars), and has been a trainer on ANUCES EU training for the Australian Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade, and College of Europe training for the Peruvian Diplomatic Academy.
Anne McNaughton, Australian National University, Australia
Anne McNaughton’s research focuses on the European Union as a unique legal order in international law. She has been studying this phenomenon since completing her Master of Laws in Tübingen, Germany, in 1991. Her thesis was on the incorporation of the territory of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) into the European Communities following the reunification of Germany in 1990.

Anne is a Fellow of the European Law Institute (ELI) and co-chair of the Special Interest Group, Global Private Law (formerly Contract Tort and Property Law). She is a corresponding member of the Principles of European Insurance Contract Law (PEICL) and Principles of Reinsurance Contract Law (PRICL).  Anne is the Director of the Centre for Commercial Law in the ANU College of Law, an adjunct and acting Deputy Director of the ANU Centre for European Studies, a Senior Fellow in the Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence, EU-Australia Centre for Economic Cooperation (EUOzCEC) and the Academic Coordinator of the Jean Monnet Project, Identifying Opportunities in EU-Australia Trade in Services (EUOzTiS).

Anne’s research is directed to developing a more sophisticated and evidence-based understanding of the European Union in the broader Australian community and the wider Asia-Pacific region beyond the Common Agricultural Policy. She was an investigator on an interdisciplinary ARC Linkage Grant, ‘Australia and the European Union: A Study of a changing trade and business relationship’. Most recently Anne has been researching and publishing on the integration of services in the European Union.

Recent publications deal with the original concept of mutual evaluation, first developed by the European Commission in the 2006 Services Directive.

Dr Matthew Castle, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand
Matthew is Lecturer in International Relations at Victoria University of Wellington. He researches issues in international political economy, with a focus on international trade and the politics of international economic rule making. His research expertise includes international relations, the political economy of trade and investment, the politics of international negotiations, and comparative regional integration. He teaches courses on European Union politics; international cooperation; and international political economy.

Matthew is working on several projects that examine how countries design international institutions, and how in turn the evolution of global institutions shapes patterns of international cooperation between states. His research shows how legal agreements establish precedent, which negotiators vie to set and to leverage during subsequent encounters. His research appears in several top journals, including International Studies Quarterly, the Review of International Studies and the Journal of European Integration. He also has a book chapter in an edited volume published at Georgetown University Press.

Matthew has presented his research at a wide range of international conferences and workshops, including through invitation. Between 2018 and 2019 he was Trade Officer at the Delegation of the European Union to New Zealand, where he worked to support the negotiation of a Free Trade Agreement between the EU and New Zealand. Matthew holds a PhD from McGill University, and MA, BA(Hons) and BA degrees from Victoria University of Wellington.

A Joint Declaration of Cooperation on a Pacific Partnership for Sustainable Development was signed in 2016.

Dr Mark Furness, German Development Institute, Germany
Mark is a senior researcher in the Inter- and Transnational Cooperation Programme at the German Development Institute (DIE) in Bonn. His research and policy advisory work focuses on German and European development cooperation, policy coherence, and the MENA region. He has published several articles, book chapters, policy briefs and opinion pieces on EU development policy, focusing mainly on how the EU and its member states engage with peace- and state-building challenges in conflict affected countries. He recently edited a special issue for Development Policy Review on EU development policy and collective action. He has provided written and oral advice to the German development and foreign ministries, the German parliament, the European Commission and Parliament, the UK House of Commons, and the OECD. He teaches a course on sustainable development at the University of Rhine-Waal and is a regular visiting lecturer at the Central European University in Budapest.

Professor Bruce Wilson, RMIT, Australia
Bruce is the Director of the European Union Centre at RMIT, and a member of the Executive Board, ESAANZ. In this role, he provides insights to and leads research and debate on EU-Australian relations, encouraging mobility for staff and students, and for building partnerships between Australian universities and organisations and their European counterparts. He leads a major Jean Monnet network on the EU role in implementation of the SDGs, a Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence on smart specialisation and regional policy, and a project on innovation and trade. These interventions seek to promote innovative economic development that improves the living and working conditions of people in metropolitan and rural city-regions. He has had long experience in working with all levels of government on organisational and social change and is committed to linking researchers and policy makers with city and regional governments in policy formation related to social and economic policy, innovation, lifelong learning and environment. He was a founding Co-Director of Pascal International Observatory.

Dr Mathew Doidge, University of Canterbury, New Zealand
Mathew specialises in the study of the European Union (with a focus on its external relations) and international development. He is a Fellow of the National Centre for Research on Europe, with experience teaching a range of modules on the European Union, and on the politics of international development both at the undergraduate and postgraduate levels. He has taught at Universities in New Zealand, Germany and the United Kingdom, and has authored a number of articles and books addressing the external relations of the EU, including its development policy. His research interests include: EU external relations (with foci on development policy and EU–Asia relations), regionalism, interregionalism, and development. Dr Doidge has recently been funded with an Erasmus+ Jean Module ‘European Union Development Policy in International Context’ module (and of its postgraduate extension ‘The European Union and the International Political Economy of Development’, and is being mentored by Professor Martin Holland as Director of the NCRE.
Dr Doidge will contribute to the project through his extensive expertise on the EU’s role in the Asia-Pacific.

Taking NZ’s historical relationship with the UK into account, this area considers whether the outcome of the UK’s exit from he EU will have an impact on the EU’s CFSP and what could this mean for EU-NZ relations.

Professor Richard Whitman, University of Kent, United Kingdom
Richard is Professor of Politics and International Relations in the School of Politics and International Relations. He joined the University of Kent in September 2011. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Chatham House (formerly known as the Royal Institute of International Affairs) and an Academic Fellow at the European Policy Centre. He regularly writes and researches for think tanks.

Richard is a contributor to leading journals, and has presented many papers and keynote addresses. His current research interests include the external relations and foreign and security and defence policies of the EU, and the governance and future priorities of the EU. He is a lead editor of the Journal of Common Market Studies on the editorial boards of European Security and Studia Diplomatica. He was an ESRC Senior Fellow on its UK in a Changing Europe initiative and leading a project on The interrelationship of UK and EU foreign policy: costs and benefits in 2016.

Richard is a regular media commentator, working with print and broadcast media at home and overseas. He has been interviewed widely on Europe and European integration. Recent coverage has included BBC radio and television, CNN, Bloomberg, CNBC, Newsweek, Reuters, the International Herald Tribune and the Wall Street Journal. Professor Whitman was elected a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in October 2007 and from 2009-2012 the elected Chair of the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES). He was Chair of the British International Studies Association (BISA) 2017-2018.

Dr Ben Wellings, Monash University, Australia
Ben is an expert on Brexit and the politics of nationalism and Euroscepticism in contemporary Europe. He writes regularly for The Conversation, the Globe and Mail and The Drum on Brexit, English nationalism, Euroscepticism and the politics of the European Union. Read his Conversation article on the implications of Brexit for Australia.

He comments regularly about Brexit on television for Sky News, the ABC, Channel 10, Bloomberg and on international TV and radio, as well as contributing op-eds for major newspapers and via online media.  In 2012 he debated one of the leaders of the UK’s Brexit Campaign, Daniel Hannan MEP in Auckland: Watch his debate with Daniel Hannan MEP at the New Zealand Initiative in May 2012.

Before joining Monash University in 2013 he was the Convenor of European Studies at the Australian National University from 2004. He is a sought after public speaker and clear communicator of complex ideas to diverse audiences.  As well as providing expert commentary for Asian media outlets and presenting his research to government in Australia, the UK and at NATO HQ in Brussels, he recently gave one of the Australian Senate’s Occasional Lectures in Canberra: ‘Taking Back Control: Parliament, Sovereignty and Brexit‘.

Dr Mona Krewel
Dr Mona Krewel is lecturer in Comparative Politics with a specialization in the study of elections, political parties, and public opinion at Victoria University of Wellington, as well as an External Fellow of the Mannheim Center for European Social Research (MZES) at the University of Mannheim (Germany). Before joining VUW, Dr Krewel has been the DAAD Visiting Assistant Professor in Cornell’s Department of Government where she taught classes on (Western) Europe and EU politics, political communication, and quantitative methods from 2015 to 2019. At Cornell University she has also been a Faculty Affiliate of the Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.

Dr Krewel’s research mostly focuses on the relation between media and politics in Western Europe and in particular on the role of the media in election campaigns. In this context, she is specifically interested in persuasive and mobilizing campaign effects on voters. Dr Krewel is a member of the board of the German Society for Electoral Research (DGfW) and part of the election study teams which conduct the German Longitudinal Election Study (GLES) and the New Zealand Election Study (NZES). Besides that, she is also conducting the New Zealand Social Media Study (NZSMS). Moreover, Dr Krewel as extensively researched the Council of Europe’s (COE) as as well as the EU’s media policy, in particular their broadcasting policies.

Dr Krewel is available for all media requests regarding national elections in Europe as well as the European parliamentary elections and the media coverage and political communication around these elections, as well as on EU summits and EU politics.

Dr Karl Löfgren
Dr Karl Löfgren is Deputy Head of School and Associate Professor in the School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. He has previously held academic positions with Copenhagen University (Denmark), Malmö University (Sweden) and Roskilde University (Denmark). Current research interests include public administration, digital governance, and policy implementation/organisational changes/reforms in public sector organisations, and Scandinavian.
With respect to EU-studies, Karl has been involved in research on project management with respect to EU structural funding, and cross-border collaboration. He co-edited in 2015 the Palgrave “Research methods in EU-studies” (with Kenneth Lynggaard and Ian Manners).

Project Manager
Yvonne Grosch has been trained as Buerokauffrau in Germany and worked for a number of years an Executive Assistant and Project Manager. From 2010 to 2012 she worked at the National Centre for Research on Europe (NCRE) at the University of Canterbury (New Zealand), supporting the Centre in the organisation of high-profile local and national events, student support and administration, and outreach. Since 2012 Yvonne is Project Manager for the European Union Centres Network (EUCN) and National Centre for Research on Europe (NCRE). Yvonne holds a Diploma in Project Management and is a Fellow of the New Zealand Institute of Management and Leadership (NZIML). Yvonne has successfully managed a number of European Commission grants under the academic direction of Professor Martin Holland.