The Politics of Economics: European Political Economy during the Eurocrisis

The current generation of European youth are entering into a society riven by economic concerns including high youth unemployment, government cutbacks and anaemic economic growth. Our new Jean Monnet module ‘The Politics of Economics’ will equip students with the fundamental concepts of European political economy to understand these issues and the relevance to the current economic and financial predicament known as the ‘Eurocrisis’. The module’s focus will be on bringing students with a non-economic background up to speed on how the EU economy functions, investigating the benefits of the EU for the British economy, while also exploring the impact of EU policy making more generally.

This new module has been developed over the past two years as a direct response to demand from our students for a more ‘hands-on’ EU policy module with a greater focus on political economy. By bringing in multiple teaching methods such as webinars with policy practitioners, site visits to the ECB and an end-of-term simulation game, the module is both focussed on the student learning experience, and on wider formal and informal employability skills.

Further activities

The Politics of Economics is but one part of a much wider range of activities that we have introduced to our Politics and International Relations programmes with the support of the Jean Monnet award. These include:

1. The Politics of Economics: European Political Economy in the Time of the Eurocrisis. A 50-hour second-year module on European Political Economy within the BSc in European Politics, including three webinars and an EU summit simulation.
2. Jean Monnet Mini-Classes. 10 hours of EU Studies teaching to support Jean Monnet Chair module ‘Quo Vadis EU’ (Dr Amelia Hadfield) and Jean Monnet module ‘Europe: from Continent to Community’ (Dr Sarah Lieberman).
3. Jean Monnet Master Classes. Two European political economy one-day workshops actively supporting MSc research students.
4. Two day visits to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt-am-Main.

Find out more

You can find out more about our Jean Monnet award by following the links at the side of the page. By exploring these pages you will be able to learn more about the different elements of our funding, including the work of the Jean Monnet Chair and other activities we will be undertaking thanks to our prestigious European award.