30 years of the Contemporary European Studies Association of Australia (CESAA)

Abstract

The establishment of the European Studies Association of Australia (CESAA) owes much of its emergence and vitality to changes in the new geo-political framework and especially to the end of the Cold War in Europe. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, followed by the end of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Maastricht Treaty deliberations in 1993 responded to these political changes. What captured the imagination of the world, including in Australia, with the Maastricht Treaty was the proposal for a single currency (the Euro) not to mention the embracement of a new name – The European Union (EU). These changes provided the twelve members of the European Community of the time a new global actor in the making. Australia, across the board began to engage with this entity and universities, scholars and others began to seek out the nature of the European Union. In this context came the association for European Studies which saw it had a voice for these European developments.