Enrique Banús, the director of the UIC Charlemagne Institute for European Studies, has been re-elected president of the European Community Studies Association (ECSA) for the third time. Dr. Banús has held this post since January 2009 and the General Assembly of the ECSA agreed to renew his tenure for the next two years. He was officially appointed president in a ceremony which took place in Brussels on Wednesday, 14 November 2012.

ECSA is an international scientific network of 59 regional and national associations in the European Union, China and the United States. It brings together professors and researchers whose common objective is to work towards European integration. The association has a total of approximately 8,000 members.

Dr. Banús will therefore continue to be the president of all these associations and the UIC will continue to be the official seat of the ECSA. The association’s ultimate objective at the global level is to open channels of communication with civil society so that the European project is not confined solely to universities. As the President of ECSA World, Enrique Banús is also a member of the European Universities Board, a group of 12 professors from different countries who advise the European Commission on matters relating to universities.

Enrique Banús holds a PhD in Philosophy and Literature from RWTH Aachen University in Germany. He has worked as a professor at such German universities as Aachen, Cologne, Bonn and Paderborn. From 1988 to 2007, he was a professor at the University of Navarra. Since December 2001, he has been a member of the European Commission’s Scientific Committee dedicated to intercultural dialogue. In 2003, the European Commission awarded him the ad personam Jean Monnet Chair in European Culture. At the UIC, he was the Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and the Director of the Master’s Degree Programme in Cultural Management. He is currently the Director of the UIC Charlemagne Institute for European Studies.