Vivien A. Schmidt is Jean Monnet Professor of European Integration, Professor of International Relations in the Frederick S. Pardee School of Global Studies and Professor of Political Science at Boston University, as well as Founding Director of BU’s Center for the Study of Europe. She received her B.A. from Bryn Mawr and her Masters and PhD from the University of Chicago, and attended Sciences Po in Paris.
She is also an honorary Professor at LUISS Guido Carli University in Rome. She has also been a visiting professor or visiting scholar at numerous institutions, including the Sciences Po in Paris, the Free University of Berlin, the Free University of Brussels, the European University Institute, Copenhagen Business School, Cambridge University, Oxford University, and Harvard University, where she is also co-chair of the Study Group on the European Union. She is past head of the European Union Studies Association (EUSA) and sits on a number of advisory boards, including the Wissenschaft Zentrum Berlin, the Vienna Institute for Peace, the Foundation for European Progressive Studies (Brussels), and the Sheffield Political Economy Research Institute.
Her areas of expertise e include European Union, European politics and society, France, comparative politics, comparative political economy, democratic theory, and neo-institutionalist theory (discursive institutionalism).