Rebecca Adler-Nissen and Kristin Anabel Eggeling, The Brussels Bubble: Inside the European Union in the Digital Age – Cambridge University Press, June 2026

What happens when European politics goes digital? Behind the scenes in European Union institutions, a quiet transformation is reshaping the way power works. Based on long-term ethnographic research, this book follows diplomats, civil servants, spokespersons, and interpreters through the corridors, meeting rooms, cafés, and smartphone screens of Brussels’ European Quarter. Against the backdrop of Brexit, the COVID-19 pandemic, and Russia’s war on Ukraine, it reveals how digital technologies have become inseparable from the practice of international politics—reshaping trust, tact, and authority in unexpected ways. Far from a tale of technological revolution, The Brussels Bubble exposes digitalisation as a messy, human negotiation about what diplomacy and Europe itself mean today. Combining vivid narrative with sharp theoretical insight, it offers a rare, inside view of how global governance, technology, and human interaction intertwine at the heart of European power. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

• Drawing on behind-the-scenes access to Brussels during defining crises, this book offers an unparalleled, first-hand view of how EU diplomats navigate technological change and human challenges under intense political and geopolitical pressure
• Reconceptualizes international politics and global governance as practices transformed by crises, connectivity, and digital infrastructures – revealing how trust, authority, and secrecy evolve in a world where the EU emerges as a digitally and politically constituted site of power
• Blends ethnographic observation with storytelling, theory, and reflection – moving fluidly between Brussels meeting rooms to online negotiations and personal encounters, offering an engaging, relatable lens on how digitalization and politics intertwine in contemporary Europe
• This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core