University College Dublin

Faculty Member, School of Business

Lecturer in International and Comparative Employment Relations

About

I have been a lecturer in UCD since 2002. I am a graduate of the Freie Universität Berlin and the Institute d' Études Politiques de Paris, and obtained my PhD in social and political sciences at the European University Institute in Florence. 

I am teaching European, international, and comparative  employment relations and am directing the UCD/Cornell University, ILR School "Semester in Dublin" Program at UCD.

I am also an associate of the UCD Dublin European Institute and was Marie Curie Visiting Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Social Justice at the University of Oxford (Hilary Term 2007/08).   

My research interests cover a wide area, including democratic theory, European public policy, and international and comparative employment relations. 

In my most recent book:

EUROPEAN UNIONS, Labor's Quest for a Transnational Democracy (Cornell University Press, 2008) 
http://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/cup_detail.taf?ti_id=4812


I challenge the assertion that no realistic prospect exists for remedying the European Union's democratic deficit—that is, its domination by corporate interests and lack of a cohesive European people. My book describes the emergence of a European trade union movement that crosses national boundaries. I assess national and EU-level trade union politics in two core areas: wage bargaining in the European Monetary Union and job protection during transnational corporate mergers and restructuring; and find that the activities of organized labour are not confined to the national level. Trade unions' policies have undergone Europeanization. This cross-national borrowing of tactics is itself proof of the increasing integration of European states and societies.

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