JO SHAW

Professor Jo Shaw
Salvesen Chair of European Institutions
School of Law
University of Edinburgh

BA (Cantab); LenDR (Brussels), LLD (Edinburgh), FRSA, ALCSS

Research

In 2007 Jo Shaw completed a longstanding project on electoral rights for non-nationals in Europe with the publication of a book: The Transformation of Citizenship in the European Union, Cambridge University Press. The book examines EU electoral rights in the broader context of citizenship and constitutionalism in the EU, understood as a multi-level polity comprising both the EU and its institutions, the Member States and indeed the subnational authorities. One policy related output from this work is a collaboration with members of the Migration and Citizenship Research Initiative, based at University College Dublin. In a team led by Dr Bryan Fanning, she has participated in the production of a pamphlet (pdf file) outlining research into the immigration and integration policies of Ireland's principal political parties, in the context of the general election 2007, and she continues to collaborate with Dr. Fanning on follow up work.

in the context of her work on citizenship related issues, Jo collaborates with other Edinburgh academics through an interdisciplinary Migration and Citizenship Research Group housed within Edinburgh Politics, but including scholars from many disciplines including social policy, sociology and geography. She is also a member of Cluster B3 of IMISCOE, an FP6-funded Network of Excellence.

From 2007 onwards, she began to widen her interests in aspects of citizenship in Europe. In July 2007, she was awarded funding under the International Programme of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, in partnership with the Slovenian Academy of Sciences, to visit the Chair of International Law, Faculty of Law, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia. Together with Rainer Bauboeck of the European University Institute, she was successful in an application to have a project entitled CITMODES (Acquisition and Loss of Nationality: a study of citizenship in and across modern European states) adopted as an Academy Research Project by the British Academy. This will involve the development of an extensive observatory on citizenship and nationality laws, building in particular on Rainer Bauboeck's NATAC project. This prestigious kitemark is only granted to about 40 long-running projects, which the Academy believes to be of great significance.

Other related research projects include a study of the Constitutionalisation of Europe's Transnational Political Parties (funded by the ESRC), with Stephen Day, now based at Oita University in Japan, and work on the mainstreaming of gender and other equality principles into EU law and public policy, in particular a report funded by the European Network Against Racism.

In the field of substantive EU law, she has recently published a textbook on the Economic and Social Law of the European Union (co-authors Jo Hunt and Chloe Wallace). This is a companion volume to her now sadly rather outdated, but soon to be updated, book on EU constitutional and institutional law, also with Palgrave: Law of the European Union. She also works (and teaches) in the field of EU Justice and Home Affairs Law and Policy. Sometimes, when she finds time, she writes a blog on EU Law and Politics, on which comments are welcome.

Knowledge Transfer

 Jo Shaw engages in what. these days, is coyly termed 'knowledge transfer'. This seems to be anything you do that isn't delivering a paper to a purely academic audience.

Much of the work she has done with the Federal Trust falls under this heading, especially the Constitutionalism project of 2001-2004, but also more recent work such as reports on flexibility and justice and home affairs. More generally, Jo has delivered numerous lectures on the constitutional process of the EU in recent years for non-academic or mixed audiences, and you can find a lecture given in Malta in December 2006 here (pdf) and a paper given at the Swedish Institute of European Policy Studies annual conference in November 2006 here (pdf).

On 14 November 2007, she gave oral evidence before the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union, Sub Committee E (Law and Institutions) in the context of their enquiry into the Freedom, Security and Justice dimensions of the Reform Treaty. You can listen to the evidence session here and download the resulting volumes comprising the report and evidence taken from this page. In February 2008, she responded to a restricted call for evidence from the House of Lords Select Committee on the Constitution, in the context of the Committee's enquiry into the impact of the Treaty of Lisbon on the UK Constitution.

Turning to the field of citizenship, she spoke at a Conference on Migration convened during the UK Presidency of the EU in November 2005 at Dunblane, and she delivered a paper to the Scottish Policy Innovation Forum (in the context of a session on demographic change) on the role of Scottish political institutions in relation to migrants' political rights (downloadable here). In March 2008, she presented a paper asking "How European are European Parliament Elections" at a hearing held by the Constitutional Affairs Committee of the European Parliament, in the context of report being prepared by the Committee on the possibility for a modification of the Act concerning the election of the Members of the European Parliament by direct universal suffrage of 20 September 1976.

Finally, as Co-Director of the Europa Institute she took primary responsibility for the Institute's Treaty of Rome Conference in January 2008 and its associated essay competition, having raised funds from the European Parliament Directorate General for Information to co-fund the conference.