IRES Faculty Wins Journal Article Award

CEU's Xymena Kurowska, Assistant Professor of International Relations and European Studies (IRES), and co-author Benjamin Tallis, a political analyst and border security expert, have been awarded an annual prize for the best article published in European Foreign Affairs Review in 2009.

The article, EU Border Assistance Mission to Ukraine and Moldova – Beyond Border Monitoring?, examines the EU Border Mission in Ukraine and Moldova (EUBAM), one of the “more substantive border-management projects” by EU-member states in the post-Soviet region, according to Kurowska. EUBAM was established by the European Commission in 2005 to help the region’s border and customs officials bring its activities in line with European standards in tackling smuggling, illegal migration and other criminal activity, particularly in the Transnistrian region. Kurowska spent eight months in Kiev on a post-doctoral research grant from the European Foreign and Security Studies Program studying how EUBAM organizes these missions along the 1222-km Moldovan-Ukrainian border.

Kurowska partnered with Tallis to examine EUBAM’s history and institutional background in order to re-chart the mission’s success, its practical implications and impact on the region. “The mission itself was our 'point of entry' so to speak,” Kurowska said, “but it makes no sense to simply look at what the mission does, but rather at how it was launched, who were the actors involved in Brussels and on the ground in the Ukraine.” The aim, Kurowaska explained, was to contrast mandates from Brussels with how those policies were applied in the field.  

The European Foreign Affairs Review is an internationally peer-reviewed academic journal covering foreign affairs issues within the European Union. The quarterly publication matches scholars with practitioners, policy-makers and journalists in order to provide a public forum for EU policy interests and strategies. 

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Xymena Kurowska received her PhD from the European University Institute in 2008. Her research focuses on interdisciplinary approaches to security studies, European foreign policy and state building. She has been an Assistant Professor at CEU since 2008.

Benjamin Tallis is a freelance journalist and political analyst who has worked on border missions and security issues in the Balkans and former Soviet Union for the EU and OSCE. He is currently a doctoral student at the University of Manchester, UK.