JMU Team Publishes Interactive Dashboards Containing All 19 European Commissions

Since its establishment in 1958, the European Commission has been criticized for being opaque and unaccountable. Students in JMU’s Power, Language, and Leadership (PL2) lab are working to make the Commission more transparent.

Their most recent interactive dashboards are launching pads for users seeking information about the European Union’s historical and contemporary executive leaders.

Integrating information from the PEU database, the Historical Archives of the European Union, the Luxembourg Centre for Contemporary and Digital History, the Barbara Sloan EU Document Collection, Wikipedia, and elsewhere, the dashboards present images and Commission-specific biographies for all commissioners who have served since 1958.

The dashboards allow users to learn about the accomplishments and controversies that have surrounded all 19 Commissions and points users who want more depth to useful outside resources.

John Scherpereel, Professor of Political Science and coordinator of JMU’s Modern European Studies minor, has enjoyed working with undergraduate lab members on the project. “It’s been a lot of fun to see the light bulbs flashing over lab members’ heads. We hope that the new dashboards will complement the dashboards we’ve published in the past and that they will serve students, scholars, journalists, non-governmental organizations, and anyone else who wants to understand how decisions get made in today’s Europe.”