Today I had the pleasure to act as external examiner at the University of St. Andrews in the defense of Maurizio Carmini’s dissertation. In the thesis, which was successfully defended, Carmini investigates the role of the Italian Mare Nostrum operation in the addressing human smuggling in the Mediterranean. Carmini assesses the effects of the mission on the basis of documents and first hand interviews with Italian navy officials. The thesis was supervised by Dr. Peter Lehr.