The European Studies Alliance houses four international Centers created through competitive grants. Each Center pursues its own range of intellectual and programmatic activities. The ESA provides a common profile for European Studies at UW-Madison by coordinating the classroom, research, and public affairs undertakings that all four Centers pursue in the same area.

• Center for German and European Studies
  
  CGES was created in 1998 in cooperation with the German government and administered by DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service). CGES continues to support research, teaching, and outreach in a broad range of fields and disciplines which cover contemporary Germany and Europe from a trans-Atlantic perspective, involving faculty, graduate students, and visiting scholars.

• European Union Center of Excellence
  
  The UW-Madison first won a grant from the European Commission to establish a European Union Center in 1998. In 2005 the center was among 10 in the U.S. that were awarded new grants as European Union Centers of Excellence and in 2008 the European Commission renewed the Center's funding through 2011 with a grant of 300,000 Euro. The EUCE promotes and supports scholarship, teaching, and outreach activities aimed at improving understanding of the European Union as a complex, evolving governance system and international actor while also enhancing awareness of the scope of EU-US relations and promoting "people-to-people" links among EU and U.S. students, academics, policymakers and citizens.

• Center for European Studies
  
  CES belongs to a select group of U.S. Department of Education "Title VI" National Resource Centers that are granted funds to educate university audiences, the K-14 community, the broader public, and state agencies about Europe. University of Wisconsin-Madison was first awarded this grant in 2000 and has been recently renewed for the period 2006-2010.
  
• Center for Interdisciplinary French Studies
  
  CIFS at UW-Madison was formally established in 2000 to advance the study of French in all domains. The Center's mission was defined to take advantage of existing synergies across the university, with industry, with the private sector, and with the general public in Wisconsin and beyond, and to work in cooperation with the network of Centre pluridisciplinaires, privileged partners with the French Cultural Service in higher education.

ESA’s Common Goals:

To create new and interdisciplinary courses for undergraduate and graduate students that prepare them to work in the global economy and policy arenas

To pursue innovative research that provides Wisconsin and American businesses and citizens with essential insights into the workings of contemporary Europe

To build on current scholarly networks and student exchanges to enhance transatlantic learning in the humanities, social sciences and in the professional fields.

To reach out to businesses, legislators, journalists, secondary schools and the broader community in Wisconsin and the Midwest with a variety of programs that expand knowledge about Europe.