Professor Tommaso Pavone awarded the 2024 Carolina de Miguel Moyer Young Scholar Award

Recognizing a scholar under forty who has made the most significant contribution to the study of Europe through their publications, the award was established in memory of cherished CEES colleague Carolina de Miguel Moyer. Though Prof. de Miguel Moyer sadly passed away prior to Prof. Pavone joining CEES, he shared his gratitude for the example she set for young scholars. When asked about her impact in the field and CEES community, Prof. Pavone reflected that, “Her body of scholarship speaks for itself and leaves a lasting legacy despite her untimely passing, while everyone that knew her spoke about how kind and collegial she was.” He said that Prof. de Miguel Moyer’s lasting impact reminds academics of the capacity to be both a great scholar and a kind person.  

Prof. Pavone’s scholarship represents a coherent contribution to an interdisciplinary understanding of Europe through the study of its laws and politics. At the heart of his work lie the interactions and feedback in law and policy between the European Union and its member states. He has explored not just how European integration has been advanced by the mobilisation of local lawyers, national governments, and supranational judges and policymakers within EU institutions, but he has also searched for the EU’s Achilles heel to understand how the rule of law in Europe is threatened and can be made more resilient.  

Trained as a political scientist, Prof. Pavone also draws on interdisciplinary perspectives, including legal and sociological approaches, and finds great value in multi-method research. Though interview-centric fieldwork continues to suffuse his work (indeed, Prof. Pavone’s award-winning first book – The Ghostwriters: Lawyers and the Politics behind the Judicial Construction of Europe – draws on over 350 interviews with national lawyers and judges to understand when and why they mobilize European law against their own governments), he has also recently been conducting extensive archival fieldwork at the European Commission in Brussels.  

When asked what motivates his work as a scholar, Prof. Pavone shared that his identity is a strong driving force. Born in Italy, he has lived and worked in Rome, Milan, Brussels, and Oslo while traveling throughout Europe. Despite connections to these cities, he does not consider himself a Roman, Milanese, or even an Italian as much as a European who became interested in the idea of supranational cooperation and quickly discovered the immense complexity of the EU. An ever-curious academic, Prof. Pavone gravitates towards phenomena that he doesn’t understand—puzzling political systems and research questions, of which the EU is an endless reservoir. After studying the EU for almost fifteen years, he says there is still so much to learn. 

“In many ways, the EU has never been more interesting,” said Prof. Pavone. Following June’s European elections, the European Parliament is now the most conservative in its history, with 25% of its members hailing from Euro-sceptic and radical right parties. Other challenges – such as the European Commission’s recent retreat from vigorously enforcing EU law, the constitutional breakdowns of member states like Hungary, and the outbreak of aggressive war at the EU’s doorstep in Ukraine – raise serious concerns about how these crises will reshape the EU’s character going forward. These questions do not deter, but rather invigorate Prof. Pavone’s work, which seriously examines how these stress tests are changing the trajectory of European integration. For him, there is no better time to study Europe through a more comparative, historical, and critical perspective. He urged scholars and students alike to revisit “all the old assumptions” about European politics to renew its study moving forward. 

Since joining the University of Toronto community this past year, Prof. Pavone expressed his gratitude to his students and colleagues for fostering a vibrant intellectual place to study Europe from a variety of perspectives. He looks forward to the ways in which this award will allow him to continue to build UofT’s legacy in this field, all while honouring the work and memory of Prof. de Miguel Moyer.  

Congratulations, Prof. Pavone!