Medicine & Healthcare

The series "Salzburg European Union Studies" aims at publishing interdisciplinary works tackling salient questions of European integration. The general success story of European integration has repeatedly shown signs of stalemate and rupture: With its finalité being still unclear, the project of integration is contested. A hybrid of supranational and intergovernmental elements, the Union’s institutional set-up is permanently “under construction”. The persisting discrepancy between market and monetary integration on the one hand and the democratic quality of decision-making as well as the lack of a European social dimension on the other constitutes one major source of the dissent. The financial and economic crisis has triggered intensive debates about European economic governance and better modes of co-ordination of economic policy, mutual surveillance and sanctions. The Union has also considerably raised the stakes by launching a new constitutional process at the turn of the century. Debates inside and outside the two Conventions were not only about institutions and procedures but also about values and identities, about the effects of EU policies on labour markets, welfare concepts and the European society in general. Last but not least, international competition challenges the European project and demands a stronger role in foreign affairs and in the relationship with its neighbouring countries.

Communicating scientific and academic know-how is extremely relevant to our modern, knowledge-based society. Not only do individuals make decisions and act on the basis of scientific and academic knowledge, but so do political, economic and other types of institutions. As a field of practice, scientific and academic communication is omnipresent, regardless of whether it takes the form of scientific journalism or scientific PR. This series of publications provides a forum for current research into communicating scientific and academic knowledge and the public sphere, academia and other areas of society, such as politics or economics, and scientists and academics among each other.