The European Institute is UCL’s hub for research, teaching and collaboration on Europe. With a multifaceted programme, we aim to establish it as a Centre for Excellence advancing EU Studies at UCL, the UK, and beyond. We will facilitate and conduct research that adds value through innovative formats, networking and international cooperation; develop new teaching activities and openly accessible outputs; and build on our strengths in engendering debate on EU affairs with students and young people, academic faculty, and policy, political, diplomatic and media professionals.5 thematic strands will structure our work, all addressing core challenges for the EU at the present time. With free movement concerns on the rise, our MIGRATION strand explores experiences of EU migrants and their host societies through fieldwork and documentary resources. We examine the reassertion of SOVEREIGNTY, be it with Catalonia, Scotland or “Brexit”, or with claims for parliamentary sovereignty vis-à-vis the EU, in two major events. A research strand on LEGITIMACY gathers top European academics to discuss what makes people accept an authority as legitimate, leading to a monograph. Conferences and a policy meeting will address the experiences of LGBTQ migrants and asylum seekers, resulting in policy papers and journal publications. A summer school course finally discusses DEMOCRATIC FATIGUE 30 years after the end of Communism and 15 since the EU’s Eastern enlargement.We add to these EU CAREER and QUESTION TIME events in parliament with a leading youth engagement organization, and develop dissemination tools – a BRITAIN & EUROPE Blog, a guest-edited week with openDemocracy, and video shorts on UCL European research.Our core team draws on a wide range of UCL lawyers, economists, area specialists and political scientists. Well known for increasing the visibility of EU research, we now aim to bring its controversies, advances and factual clarity to bear on an increasingly charged debate.