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M.E.F. Shackleton

Career history

Michael Shackleton received his first degree in Politics and Philosophy in 1972 at Worcester College, Oxford. He obtained an MA in International Relations from the University of Sussex in 1973, and was awarded his Ph.D. in International Studies at the University of Warwick in 1985.

 

Dr. Shackleton gained his first experience of the European Communities as an in-service trainee in the Information Directorate-General of the Commission between 1973 and 1974. From 1974 to 1980 he worked at the Open University in Great Britain, initially as a course assistant and subsequently  as a lecturer in Government in the Faculty of Social Sciences.

 

Dr. Shackleton joined the Secretariat of the European Parliament in 1981. From 1985 to 1992 he was on the secretariat of the Committee on Budgets; from 1992 to 1995 he worked within the division responsible for relations between the European Parliament and national parliaments; during 1996 he was Head of the Secretariat of the first parliamentary Committee of Inquiry, which examined the Community transit system; from 1997 to 2004 he was Head of the Service responsible for conciliations under the codecision procedure between the Council and the Parliament; from  2005 to 2009, he was responsible for the establishment of a European Parliament web TV channel, known as europarltv, which was launched in September 2008.  Since October 2009 he has been head of the UK Information Office of the Parliament in London.

 

Dr. Shackleton has published widely on European Community topics. The seventh edition of a book entitled The European Parliament, on which he collaborated with two colleagues, Francis Jacobs and Richard Corbett, was published in June 2007.  An eighth edition is being prepared and will be published in the first half of 2011.  He has co-edited with John Peterson a book entitled The Institutions of the European Union, first published by Oxford University Press at the beginning of 2002, with a second edition appearing in 2006 and a third edition envisaged for 2012.  His articles include "Parliamentary Government or Division of Powers: Is the Destination Still Unknown" in The State of the Union, Vol.7, 2005, eds. Jabko, N. and Parsons, C., OUP.

 

Dr. Shackleton has lectured widely, inside and outside the Community institutions. He has given talks for the European Institute for Public Administration in Maastricht, the University Association for Contemporary European Studies in Britain and the European Union Studies Association of the United States.

 

During 1990 and 1991 he was a Visiting European Community Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley; in May 1994 he was the Sir Edward Heath Visiting Fellow at the Europa Institute of the University of Edinburgh; and from 1994 to 1999 he was a Visiting Professor at the College of Europe in Bruges, teaching a course entitled "The European Parliament and its Role within the Union".  Since 1999 he has been a Visiting Practitioner Fellow at Sussex University, in May 2004 he was a Visiting Professor at the Institut des Etudes Politiques in Paris and since the summer of 2008 he has been a Special Professor in European Institutions at the University of Maastricht.  In September 2009 he was elected to be a member of the Academy of Social Sciences.

 

Other relevant experience

  • regular speaker inside the Parliament to visiting parliamentarians, national and EU officials and university groups (in English, French and German); 
  • extensive lecturing and teaching experience outside the Parliament (Louvain and ULB in Belgium, the European Institute for Public Administration in Maastricht, the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES) and the Federal Trust in the UK, at the biennial conferences of the European Union Studies Association of the United States (papers presented in 1991, 1997, 1999, 2001, 2005 and 2007) and at the European Studies Centre of the University of Pittsburgh; and.
  • Patron of the University Association for Contemporary Studies (UACES) and member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the association's publication, Journal of Common Market Studies
  • Academician of the Academy of Social Sciences (appointed November 2009)
  • Member of the Advisory Board of the European Studies Institute (University College, London)