COMMITTEE
IACES President
Giada Lagana
(Cardiff University)
IACES Vice-Presidents
John O'Brennan (MU)
Committee Members
Evangelos Fanoulis (UG)
Ken McDonagh (DCU)
Louis Brennan (TCD)
Viviane Gravey (QUB)
Michael Holmes (ESPOL)
Ben Tonra (UCD)
Federica Fazio (DCU)
Shamsoddin Shariati (MU)
New Members
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Giada Lagana
Dr Giada Lagana is a Lecturer in Politics at Cardiff University, School of Law and Politics (LAWPL). She is the author of The European Union and the Northern Ireland Peace Process (2021), published by Palgrave McMillan. The book demonstrates that the role of the EU in the Northern Ireland peace process was much more significant than had previously been suggested. It also makes an original contribution to the theoretical literature on peacebuilding by developing an original framework that combines theories of metagovernance with the apparatus of strategic peacebuilding.
Since she has joined Cardiff University in 2019, Dr Lagana has been elected President of the Irish Association for Contemporary European Studies (IACES). She has published several articles with high-impact journals (e.g., European Urban and Regional Studies and Contemporary European History) and her research has secured funding from the Project House Europe at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (Germany), the Irish Department for Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFA), the Innovation for All Impact Fund of Cardiff University and the European School of Political and Social Sciences (ESPOL) in Lille (France).
John O’Brennan
John O’Brennan holds the Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration and is Director of the Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies at Maynooth University, and Vice-President of the Irish Association for Contemporary European Studies (IACES). His research focuses on EU Enlargement policy and on Ireland’s relationship with the EU. He has published 15 articles in international journals including: Cambridge Review of International Affairs, the European Foreign Affairs Review, European Political Science, the Journal of European integration and Parliamentary Affairs. In addition to publishing 3 books on EU Enlargement, 25 book chapters, and he is also a regular contributor to international publications on European Union issues such as Europe’s World, Project Syndicate and Open Democracy. He has published more than 100 opinion articles on EU politics and appears regularly on Irish media platforms to discuss the EU. He is also a member of the Irish government’s Brexit Stakeholder Advisory group.
Ben Tonra
Ben Tonra is Full Professor of International Relations at the University College Dublin (UCD)'s School of Politics and International Relations. At UCD he teaches, researches and publishes in European foreign, security and defence policy, Irish foreign, security and defence policy and International Relations theory.
Outside the university Ben is a Member of the Royal Irish Academy and has previously served as the chair of the Academy's Standing Committee on International Affairs. He is also a Distinguished Fellow at the Azure Forum, a Dublin-based think tank on security and defence studies and Director and Secretary (voluntary/non-remunerated) with the Irish Defence and Security Association (IDSA) CLG.
He worked previously at the Department of International Politics, University of Wales, Aberystwyth, the University of Dublin (Trinity College) and the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) Washington DC.
Evangelos Fanoulis
Dr Evans Fanoulis is lecturer above the bar in International amp; Global Politics at the School of Political Science and Sociology, University of Galway. He was previously assistant professor at Xian Jiaotong-Liverpool University, postdoc researcher at Metropolitan University Prague, lecturer in Politics at the University of Leicester and fellow at the Department of Government, University of Essex, where he also did his doctorate. He received training at the EU Commission and European External Action Service, and worked as research officer for the FP7 ANVIL (Analysis of Civil Security Systems in Europe) project. His main research interests lie within democracy and populism in Europe, EU foreign policy, and post-structuralist IR theory. He has published a research monograph entitled The Democratic Quality of European Security and Defence Policy: Between Practices of Governance and Practices of Freedom with Routledge and is co-editor of the Routledge Handbook of Critical European Studies . Other Public - No restrictionations of his include articles in the journals European Security , Review of International Studies , Global Society, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, Politics and Governance, and Journal of Common Market Studies as well as book chapters in edited volumes.
Ken McDonagh
Kenneth McDonagh is Associate Professor in International Relations in the School of Law and Government. He was Head of School from 2021-2024 and the Associate Dean for Teaching and Learning in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences from 2019-2021. His research is focused on EU Foreign Policy and Common Security and Defence Policy, the role of small states in CSDP, Ireland's security and defence policy, and the gendered impact of CSDP missions. He has published on the EU as a global actor, the gendered impact of CSDP missions and contributed to policy papers and training activities in the area of Women, Peace and Security and CSDP. He was Principal Investigator of the H2020-MCSA-ITN Global India (www.globalindia.eu) which aimed to train a new generation of experts on EU-India relations and empower them with the skills and expertise to contribute to the EU’s engagement with India. Previously, he was PI of an Irish Research Council funded project on the Gendered impact of CSDP missions in the Western Balkans which produced training material and policy reports aimed at the European External Action Service and other stakeholders. Dr McDonagh has over a decade of teaching experience in EU and International Relations at Undergraduate and Postgraduate levels.
Louis Brennan
Louis Brennan is a Fellow of Trinity College and a Professor within the Trinity Business School at Trinity College. He previously served as Director of the Institute for International Integration Studies at Trinity College.
He was the founder of, and chaired from 2010-2014, a twenty six nation research network on the impact of investment by emerging economy firms on Europe.
He has two books on that topic: The Emergence of Southern Multinationals and their Impact on Europe published by Palgrave in 2010 and Emerging Market Multinationals in Europe with Dr Caner Bakir, published by Routledge in 2016. Along with Professor Philo Murray, he is the editor of the 2015 volume Drivers of Integration and Regionalism in Europe and Asia, published by Routledge in 2015.
Federica Fazio
Federica Fazio is a PhD Candidate with the School of Law & Government at Dublin City University (DCU). Her research focuses on EU-NATO cooperation and specifically the relationship between the two organisations' mutual defence commitments.
Until September 2023, Federica was also a Visiting Fellow with the University of South Wales, where she contributed to the Jean Monnet Network on EU Counter-Terrorism (EUCTER). Previously, she was a Trainee in Brussels, first with the European Parliament’s Directorate-General for External Policies of the Union (DG EXPO), and then the European Union Institute for Security Studies (EUISS) Brussels Liaison Office.
Her work has been published by Springer Nature, the Journal of European and American Intelligence Studies, the Atlantic Council, Fair Observer, the Aspen Institute Italia, the NATO Association of Canada, and the Italian Institute of Strategic Studies Niccolò Machiavelli.
Viviane Gravey
Viviane Gravey is a Senior Lecturer in European Politics at the School of History, Anthropology, Philosophy and Politics at Queen’s University Belfast, where she co‐chairs the Brexit & Environment network, investigating the impact of Brexit on the UK and EU environment.
She holds a PhD from the University of East Anglia. Her research focuses on the ambition and governance of environmental and agricultural policies in the UK and at EU level.
Michael Holmes
Michael Holmes holds a PhD in Political Science from University College Dublin, as well as an MA in European Politics from the University of Essex and a BA in Political Science from Trinity College Dublin. His areas of research are mainly European politics and Irish politics. During his career, he focused on studying the impact of European integration on political parties and party systems. Regarding Irish politics, he decided to specialize in the foreign policy of his native country and its relationship with the European Union. Michael Holmes is a member of the Political Studies Association (PSA), the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) and the Political Studies Association of Ireland (PSAI).
Shamsoddin Shariati
Shamsoddin Shariati is a PhD researcher at the Department of Sociology at the National University of Ireland Maynooth. As a John Hume scholar, Shamsoddin has undertaken responsibilities as both a research and teaching assistant within the department. Beginning in 2022, he has been a pivotal contributor to the Maynooth Centre for European and Eurasian Studies, serving as a research assistant and spearheading initiatives for the EU-funded Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence project on European integration. A noteworthy accomplishment within this project was his leadership in organizing a significant conference titled "Ireland and the EU at 50."
His research is centered around topics like state capacity, the nuanced management of intricate challenges, trust-building mechanisms, and a detailed comparative study of the efficacy of COVID-19 pandemic responses across European nations. Through his scholarly endeavors, Shamsoddin aspires to illuminate strategies for bolstering governance and enhancing the ability to navigate multifaceted crises such as climate change and energy crises effectively.
Past Presidents
Professor Mary C. Murphy served as President of IACES from 2013 to 2020, overseeing a period of significant institutional consolidation and growth, including the incorporation of IACES as a company limited by guarantee.