The European Union Center warmly welcomes visiting scholars José Luis Gómez-
Barroso and Matteo Pasetti. Dr. Gómez-Barroso will be affiliated with the EU Center as
a Fulbright-Schuman scholar for the 2022-23 academic year. He will be working
primarily on the topic of public economics in the EU but will also be helping with
organizing EU Center conferences and events. Dr. Pasetti will be at the EU Center until
Sept. 16. During his visit, he will examine published and archival materials related to
his research interests, in particular drug use as a socio-historical phenomenon in the last
decades of the twentieth century. This will be the subject of his keynote presentation for
the EU Center’s fall reception on Thursday, Sept. 15.

Please join us in welcoming Dr. Gómez-Barroso and Dr. Pasetti to the EU Center and
UIUC, and see below for their bios.

José Luis Gómez-Barroso is a professor in the department of Applied Economics and
Economic History at UNED (Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia – Spanish
National Distance Education University). His educational background includes degrees
in Economics, Law and Telecommunication Engineering. His research has focused on
the foundations of the digital economy and, in particular, on the role that the public
sector should play in this area. Building on this, he extended his work to Public
Economics in general. He is now interested in framing the activity of the European
Union institutions and bodies within the context of Public Economics.

Matteo Pasetti is Associate Professor of Contemporary History at the Department of
Philosophy and Communication Studies, University of Bologna, where he teaches
History of Mass Communication and History of Journalism at the School of Arts,
Humanities, and Cultural Heritage. He is a member of the editorial boards of several
scientific journals and he is the author, among other publications, of the books Tra
classe e nazione. Rappresentazioni e organizzazione del movimento nazional-
sindacalista, 1918-1922 (Carocci, Roma 2008), Storia dei fascismi in Europa
(Archetipolibri, Bologna 2009), and L’Europa corporativa. Una storia transnazionale
tra le due guerre mondiali (Bononia University Press, Bologna 2016).

His research deals with twentieth-century European history and, more specifically, the
history of fascism by a comparative and transnational approach. In this field of studies,
his interests include the issues of memory and public use of the past after dictatorships.
He is also interested in the evolution of mass communication, public spheres, and
circulation of ideas from a global perspective. His current work focuses on the topic of
drug consumption in the last decades of the twentieth century as a socio-historical
phenomenon.