Over the past two decades the educational practices within EU studies have been challenged by the lack of comprehensive texts on research strategy, design and method useful for study programmes. Since the ‘comparative turn’ of the 1990s, where we saw a shift towards applying theories, analytical frameworks and research methods known from the study of national political systems, EU studies programs have been faced with two choices when putting together curricula: either to downplay issues of research methodology in the curriculum, or to embark on the troublesome journey of putting together discrete readers of articles and papers from a limited and dispersed scholarly field. The actual practice of EU studies programmes has probably been somewhere in-between. That is, to give a lesser amount of attention to research strategy, design and method through the use of general textbooks combined with, at best, empirical examples derived from actual research projects in EU affairs. Yet, this otherwise pragmatic approach has become increasingly difficult. In this sense EU studies is at a crossroads of the meeting place between many disciplinary interests in Europe, as well as the point in time where the past weaknesses of methodology meet the future challenges of a new research agenda on Europe.