TEAM
OUR BOARD
Micheline Calmy-Rey
After obtaining a Master’s degree in political science from the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, she was a member of the Geneva Parliament from 1981 to 1997. In 1997, she was elected to head the Finance Department of the Cantonal Government, which she chaired from 2001 to 2002. In December 2002, she was elected to the Swiss Federal Government as head of Foreign Affairs, a position she held until December 2011. In 2007 and 2011, she was President of the Swiss Confederation. She chaired the Council of Europe in 2010 and the Ministerial Conference of the Francophonie in 2010 and 2011. In May 2012, she was appointed visiting professor at the University of Geneva. She holds an honorary doctorate from the International University of Geneva (IUG), is a member of the Board of the International Crisis Group, Geneva Call, the Center for International Relations and Sustainable Development, and the Leadership Council of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network (SDSN), and chairs the Martin Ennals Awards Foundation. She is the author of La Suisse que je souhaite, Die Schweiz, die ich uns wünsche (2014), Justice sociale et liberté politique selon Calvin : clarification et perspectives (2010).
Dusan Sidjanski
Dusan Sidjanski is Professor Emeritus at the University of Geneva, where he founded the Department of Political Science in 1969, Honorary President of the European Centre for Culture (which he chaired from 2003 to 2008), Special Advisor to Commission President José Manuel Barroso (2004-2014), and a collaborator of Denis de Rougemont from 1956. He has specialized in the study of European construction, particularly from the perspective of pressure groups and federalism. His books include: Dimensions européennes de la science politique (1963), L’Europe des affaires (with Jean Meynaud, 1967), Les groupes de pression dans la Communauté européenne (with Jean Meynaud, 1971), Europe Élections: de la démocratie européenne (1979), L’avenir fédéraliste de l’Europe (Paris, PUF, 1992), The Federal Future of Europe (Introductory Note by Jacques Delors, Foreword by Harold Jacobson, Michigan University Press, 2000). In 2011, he published “Le Traité de Lisbonne sur la voie fédéraliste?” in the journal L’Europe en formation. In 2014, he contributed to the “EU 36” project on the enlargement of the European Union with a text entitled “The Eurozone and the Future of the EU”.
Charles Méla
Charles Méla, a former student of the Ecole normale supérieure, agrégé of classical literature and Doctor d’Etat, is an honorary professor at the University of Geneva where he taught from 1981 to 2007. He was Dean of the Faculty of Letters from 1992 to 1999. From 1994 to 2003, he was president of the Martin Bodmer Foundation in Cologny-Geneva, where he had the new museum designed by the architect Mario Botta created, and from 2004 to 2013, director of the Foundation, where he organised 31 exhibitions. He has been President of the Swiss Association of Friends of the Sainte-Catherine Foundation since May 2003, of the European Centre of Culture since 2008 and of the International Menuhin Music Academy since May 2018. Charles Méla is a Knight in the National Order of Merit (1994), in the Order of Academic Palms (2002) and in the National Order of the Legion of Honour (2010). Scientific editor of Chrétien de Troyes’ novels, author of critical works, he published in 1984 La Reine et le Graal, published by Éditions du Seuil in 1984, a work crowned by the Académie française, Légendes des siècles. Parcours d’une collection mythique, published by Éditions du Cercle d’art in 2004, with a preface by Jean Starobinski, Variations sur l’amour et le Graal, published by Éditions Droz in 2012, with a preface by Michel Zink, Marcel Proust, Du côté de chez Swann. Combray in 2013 and Un amour de Swann in 2016 (Premières épreuves corrigées 1913), published by Gallimard (NRF).
François Saint-Ouen
Secretary General of the European Centre for Culture and Secretary General of the Denis de Rougemont Foundation for Europe, François Saint-Ouen is a lecturer at the Institute of Global Studies of the University of Geneva. He specialises in the study of federalism, the construction of Europe from the perspective of local and regional authorities, sustainable development and countries in transition.
His books include: Les partis politiques et l’Europe (Paris, 1990). Denis de Rougemont: introduction to his life and work (Geneva, 1995). Les grandes figures de la construction européenne (Geneva, 1997). Le fédéralisme (Lausanne, 2006), L’Avenir fédéraliste de l’Europe: du traité de Maastricht à celui de Lisbonne (Brussels, 2011). In 2014 he edited the book L’Europe de Denis de Rougemont (Academia / L’Harmattan, Louvain-la-Neuve). Since 2018, he has been the editor of the book series of the Dusan Sidjanski Competence Centre for European Studies (CCDSEE) at the University of Geneva. He has published (with Blaise Fontanellaz) Switzerland-European Union, the debates around the institutional agreement in 2019, and (with Dusan Sidjanski) Towards a European Political Union, the role of a federating core in 2022.