Kiran Klaus Patel is presently writing a monograph on the history of the European Union that also deals with phenomena and forms of disintegration triggered by the European integration process. In this context, he has become particularly interested in the history of countries that left the European Union or its predecessors–a dimension that is mostly ignored in the ongoing public debate about Brexit and the possibility of other EU member states leaving the EU. Few people know that Algeria (a newly independent state and former colony of France) took this path in 1962 and Greenland (as part of Denmark) in 1985. To analyse these cases, as well as Britain’s 1975 membership referendum, Patel has done archival research in Berlin, Florence, London and Paris, among other places.

Based on this research, Patel contributed to the international debate about Brexit with a series of contributions in the course 2016. In early June, he published a long op-ed in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Switzerland’s leading newspaper. After the United Kingdom European Union membership referendum on June 23, he gave a 10 minute radio interview in Deutschlandfunk, made a television appearance on Canada’s main news broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Company and was quoted in a Danish newspaper. In February 2017, he will give UM’s Star Lecture in London (a major event organized by Maastricht University to reach out to its alumni community) on the topic. These media appearances have helped him to sharpen his arguments. An analysis of the historiographical and political implications of disintegration in the history of the EU will appear in spring 2017 in Studies in Contemporary History, demonstrating how research informs activities with societal impact, and vice versa.

This research is part of the Politics and Culture in Europe research programme.

Prof.dr. Kiran Klaus Patel