The Ursula Hirshmann Annual Lecture Series on Gender and Europe is the annual lecture of the Gender Studies Programme of the Robert Schuman Centre for Advanced Studies. The series seeks to stimulate research and thinking which link ideas about Europe and the study of gender. Named after Ursula Hirschmann, who created the group Femmes pour l’Europe in Brussels in 1975 as a space to reflect on, critique and contribute to the contemporary debate on the construction of Europe, the series is a reminder of this engagement. Ursula Hirschmann was born in Berlin in 1913, to a Jewish family, and when the Nazis seized power in Germany, she migrated first to France and then to Italy. In 1941 she played an important role in the creation and diffusion of Spinelli’s Ventotene Manifesto. She married two anti-Fascists and Europeanists, Eugenio Colorni and Altiero Spinelli. Some of her autobiographical writings have been published as Noi senza patria (Bologna, Il Mulino, 1993).