William Kjærgaard Egendal joins the POL department as a visiting researcher
From 12 October 2026 until mid-January 2027, the European Political and Governance Studies Department welcomes Dr. William Kjærgaard Egendal for a research stay.
Read the following portrait to get to know Dr. Egendal and his work.
Written Interview
Could you introduce yourself and your research expertise in a few sentences?
I’m an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. My primary research expertise is within the field of EU legislative decision-making. My PhD dissertation was on trilogue negotiations, and I am currently working on a project on the 2025 Danish Presidency of the Council of the EU. For both projects, I have employed a combination of ethnographic fieldwork within the relevant institutions with elite interviews. In both projects, I aim to explore how diplomats, politicians and civil servants interact, how they navigate institutional rules and norms, and how they balance pursuing their own preferences against living up to norms such as consensus and sincere cooperation.
What brings you to the College of Europe and how can it support your current research?
I have always been fascinated by the College of Europe, so when I had the opportunity to go on a research stay for a few months, the College was the first place I thought of. First, the College has an unrivaled profile on EU politics and attracts some of the brightest people (students and professors!), many of whom I have wanted to meet for a long time. Concretely, a stay at the College allows me to do three things. First, it gives me time to write the several papers, as well as a book on trilogues which I am currently preparing for publication. Second, its proximity to Brussels allows me to collect additional data for my current project on the Presidency. Third, it gives me the opportunity to interact with fellow EU scholars.
How does your research project relate to the academic programmes of the College of Europe?
My research projects relate primarily to the European Political and Governance Studies (POL) and the EU International Relations and Diplomacy Studies (IRD) programmes. The EU’s legislative decision-making sits at a peculiar intersection of diplomacy, bureaucracy and politics, and my studies will hopefully be of interest to students in both programmes. However, I am happy to engage with students from any programme who might be interested in talking about trilogues, presidencies, or EU legislation more broadly!
What outcomes do you expect from this research stay?
By the end of my stay, I hope to have finished data analysis for the Presidency project, have drafts of two to three research papers, to have made progress on my book, and to have engaged with a lot of interesting new people!
Do you have any advice for current students interested in an academic career?
It all starts with a good idea – but you often don’t know how good your idea is until you talk to somebody about it. So, if you are considering pursuing a PhD and already have the beginnings of a research idea, talk to your peers and your teachers about it! Also, remember that getting a PhD is not only an option if you are interested in an academic career. The research skills you learn during doctoral studies are valuable outside academia as well.
Biography
William Kjærgaard Egendal is an assistant professor at the Department of Political Science, Aarhus University. His research focuses primarily on EU legislative decision-making, particularly the intersection between politics and administration and the role of informal interactions between negotiators. He works mainly with interpretive and qualitative methods, including ethnographic fieldwork and elite interviews.
His work has appeared in the Journal of Common Market Studies and the Journal of European Integration. He has published on the rotating presidency of the Council, trilogue negotiations, and crisis decision-making in EU fisheries policy. His forthcoming book, Trilogues: The Heart of EU Legislative Decision-Making, a revised version of his doctoral dissertation, is under contract with Palgrave Macmillan for the Palgrave Studies in European Union Politics series. He has previously been a visiting researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen (Denmark), and at the Institut de sciences politiques Louvain-Europe (ISPOLE), UCLouvain (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium).