Christiansen, Thomas

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CHRISTIANSEN, Thomas

PERSONAL: Male. Education: Holds a doctorate.

ADDRESSES: Office—European Institute of Public Administration, O.L. Vrouweplein 22, P.O. Box 1229, 6201 BE Maastricht, Netherlands. Agent—c/o Author Mail, Manchester University Press, Oxford Rd., Manchester M13 9NR, England. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: University of Wales, Aberystwyth, former Jean Monnet Lecturer in European Studies; European Institute of Public Administration, Maastricht, Netherlands, senior lecturer.

WRITINGS:

(Editor, with Emil Kirchner) Europe in Charge: Committee Governance in the European Union ("Europe in Change" series), Manchester University Press (Manchester, England), 2000.

(Editor, with others) The Social Construction of Europe, Sage (Thousand Oaks, CA), 2001.

(Editor, with Ben Tonra) Rethinking European Union Foreign Policy ("Europe in Change" series), Manchester University Press (Manchester, England), 2004.

(Editor, with Simona Piattoni) Informal Governance in the European Union, Edward Elgar (Cheltenham, England), 2003, Edward Elgar (Northampton, MA), 2004.

Contributor to periodicals, including American Political Science Review.

SIDELIGHTS: Thomas Christiansen is a senior lecturer with the European Institute of Public Administration (EIPA). According to the institute's Web site, EIPA "is an independent institute carrying out training and research on public administration and European policies, providing a variety of services to the administrations of the Member States and the candidate countries as well as the EU [European Union] institutions in support of their tasks and responsibilities related to European integration."

In addition to teaching, Christiansen is editor of a number of volumes, including, with Emil Kirchner, Europe in Charge: Committee Governance in the European Union, which promotes the idea that the integration of states into the European Union is a continuous process. In this volume, contributors concentrate on the various committees that are involved in European decision making, including committees that develop new policy, those that write legislation, and others that implement it.

Europe in Charge is divided into two sections. The first three chapters focus, in general, on the committees system, while those in the second section study special committees, including trade and monetary committees. Reviewing the book, Gunther F. Schafer wrote in West European Politics that, "in the process of exploring relatively uncharted territory, it is useful to have a basic frame of reference to differentiate what one observes."