Vivien A. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Chair of European Integration and Professor of International Relations at Boston University and Visiting Professor at Sciences Po, Paris.  She received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr College, her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Chicago, and attended the Institut d'Etudes Politiques, Paris.  She has also been a professor at the University of Massachusetts; visiting professor at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna, the European University Institute in Florence, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies in Cologne, the Universities of Paris V and X, the Universities of Lille I and II; and visiting scholar at Nuffield College, Oxford University, and at the Center for European Studies at Harvard University, where she is currently a faculty affiliate.

Professor Schmidt has written widely in the areas of European political economy, institutions and democracy, and political theory.  Her books include Democracy in Europe:  The EU and National Polities (Oxford 2006),  Public Discourse and Welfare State Reform (V. Schmidt et al.) (Mets & Schilt, 2005); Policy Change and Discourse in Europe  (co-edited with Claudio Radaelli-- Routledge 2005); The Futures of European Capitalism (Oxford 2002), Welfare and Work in the Open Economy  (2 volumes co-edited with F. W. Scharpf, Oxford  2000); From State to Market?  The Transformation of French Business and Government (Cambridge l996); and Democratizing France (Cambridge l990).  In addition, she has published over eighty articles and chapters in books.  Articles have appeared in such journals as Annual Review of Political Science, British Journal of Politics and International Relations, Comparative Politics, Comparative Political Studies, Daedalus, Economy and Society, Journal of Common Market Studies, Journal of European Public Policy, New Political Economy, Perspectives on Politics, Revue Française de Science Politique, Rivista Italiana di Scienza Politica, and West European Politics.  

Professor Schmidt is the recipient of numerous awards and distinctions.  She was awarded a French National Council for Scientific Research (CNRS) Visiting Researcher Fellowship to the Center for the Study of Politics (CEVIPOF) at Sciences Po in Paris (July-Dec. 2007) and named to the Franqui Interuniversity Chair for Foreign Scholars to lecture in Belgium at the Free University of Brussels and the Catholic University of Louvain (Jan.-June 2007).  She has been decorated by the French government as a Chevalier in the Order of the Palmes Académiques; honored by the University of Massachusetts Boston with the Distinguished Scholar Award; and given a special award for her book, Democratizing France, at the Gaston Defferre Prize Ceremony in Marseilles.  She has also held many grants and fellowships, including a Rockefeller Foundation Residency grant for the Bellagio Center, a Fulbright EU Research Award held in the UK, a Fulbright Senior Research Scholar Award in France, and a pre-dissertation fellowship under the Fulbright-Hays program. 

Professor Schmidt is past head of the European Union Studies Association-USA. She has directed European Studies activities at Boston University, and was founding Director of the European Studies Program at the University of Massachusetts, an interdisciplinary program with courses, lectures, and a European Scholar in Residence Program.  She also directed the Center for Democracy and Development of the McCormack Institute of Public Affairs at the University, an applied public policy center which has as its mission the encouragement of democratization efforts in developing nations.  As director, Professor Schmidt lectured, consulted, and ran grant programs on democracy and development in Francophone Africa (Senegal, Mali, Ivory Coast, Benin, Cameroon, and Zaïre) and Southern Africa (Namibia and South Africa).  She has also consulted widely in the US and Europe on issues related to European integration.

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