With Brexit looming large, UNU-CRIS founding director Luk Van Langenhove looks at the questions it raises for regional integration studies, and why the field is garnering so much attention. 

In his inaugural blog as new Director Ad Interim of UNU-CRIS, Luc Soete claims that CRIS is ‘hot’. This is something that I, as founding director of the Bruges campus of UNU, can only confirm. What’s more, UNU-CRIS is not only getting hotter by the day, it is also becoming cooler – its research focus is becoming increasingly entangled with the issues that are now on the radar of public opinion and policymakers, and dealt with on a daily basis by the press. The work of UNU-CRIS has never been as policy-relevant as today, but it wasn’t always so.