Europaeum Bulletin, March 2011

• Forthcoming Events: Law conference in Prague; Eastern Christianity group to meet in Leiden; Lectures in Prague and Bonn
  
• Programmes: Lisbon Summer School Conference - plus international Graduate Debate; Annual conference on The Futures for Europe in July; Policy-Making graduate seminar at European Parliament and NATO;
  
• Scholarships & Opportunities: US Junior Fellowship; Summer School in Santander in July on Europe 2030 ? ; four awards for Lisbon conference
  
• Publications & Media: Liberalisms in East and West report  
  
• Reports-of-the-Month: Federalisms in East and West conference report
  
• Link-of-the-Month: new website on Balkan Muslims
  
• Around the Members:  Paris Sorbonne opens up in Gulf; Oxford new post-doc posts; Helsinki online success.
• Footnote-of-the-Month: Europaeum Trustee to head BBC
• Endnote-of-the-Month:  A postscript from the Classicists ! 

Forthcoming Events

Conference on Liability and Infringement in EU Law

The new Centre on Comparative Law in Prague hosts a conference from March 17-18th at the Law Faculty of Charles University to look at how relations are evolving between Member States and the EU over infringements of EU law, both in theory and practice. The event on Liability in European Law is being co-ordinated by Professor Lubos Tichy, director of the new Comparative Law Centre, with experts coming from a range of member states, along with Europaeum support. Download the programme and Conference Booklet. Dr Paul Flather of the Europaeum chairs the event, which as usual aims to link young scholars with experts in the field.

Workshop on Eastern Christianity

The Europaeum will help support a third Graduate Workshop bringing together young and old scholars from Oxford, Leiden and Bologna in May to continue work on research issues and share findings on themes linked to Eastern Christianity, including Armenian, Coptic, Ethiopic, Georgian, and Syriac, as well as neighbouring Islamic, Byzantine, and Slavic cultures. The seminar, being coordinated by Professor Theo van Lint, the Calouste Gulbenkian Professor of Armenian Studies at Oxford, and colleagues, is due to meet at Leiden. Other academic participants will include Bas Romeny Ter Haar, Professor in Old Testament and Eastern Christian Traditions, Leiden; Dr Anna Sirinian, University Lecturer and Researcher in Armenian Studies, Bologna; and Dr Alison Salvesen, University Research Lecturer, Oxford. Please contact the office for more information. A programme will be put up as soon as it is available.

Europaeum Lecture - the Fall of Communism in Europe

Professor Archie Brown, Emeritus Professor of Politics at Oxford University and former Director of the Russian and East European Centre at St Antony’s College, will speak on the topic Why did Communism end in Europe? Why did it mutate in Asia? on May 11, 2011 at Charles University, Prague. Professor Brown is one of the world's premier academics on Russian and Soviet politics, Communist politics, the Cold War and political leadership. This Europaeum Lecture will be Co-Chaired by Dr Milan Znoj, Department of Political Science at Charles University, and Researcher in the Institute of Philosophy at the Czech Academy of Sciences; and Dr Michael Pullman, Head of the Department of Economic and Social History at Charles University. Please visit the Europaeum Lectures section of our website for more information.

Europaeum Lecture - Financial Decision-Making in times of Crisis

The Europaeum with its colleagues in Bonn is organising a special lecture with Professor Reinhard Selten, Nobel Prize Laureate & Emeritus Professor at the University of Bonn on Experimental Results on Financial Decision-Making in environments with Rare but Strong Crises as part of its 2011 annual Academic Council Meeting hosted by the University of Bonn. The lecture will take place on June 9th. More information and details will follow. 

Please click here to view the Europaeum Diary

Programmes

International conference on The Future of Free World 

This year's Lisbon conference theme is on The Future of the Free World with many prominent speakers from across Europe such as Lord (Raymond) Plant (King's College London), Aleksander Smolar (President of Batory Foundation, Warsaw), Marc Plattner (Editor, Journal of Democracy) among many others, hosted by our affiliate member the Institute for Political Studies, Catholic University of Portugal (IEP-UCP) from 17-29th June 2011.   Click here for a copy of the preliminary Programme.  

The Europaeum is again leading a special international debate as part of this international summer school event on Should the Free World allow Iran to get the bomb ? with graduates from the Europaeum, IEP-UCP, Boston University, Brown University, Georgetown University, and the LSE. The debate will be chaired as usual by Dr Paul Flather (Secretary General, Europaeum), with expert moderators Dr Michael Pinto-Duschinsky (Member of the Board, IFES, Oxford) and Professor Eusebio Mujal-Leon (Georgetown University, Washington DC), and Professor Miguel Monjardino (IEP-UCP and Expresso, Lisbon).  Interested Europaeum graduate students should contact the office for more information if they wish to attend. For more information please see the Debate Poster.

Europaeum Annual Conference - The Future of Europe - 2030

The future of Europe is much on the minds of all European citizens - following the fallout from the economic crisis. This year's annual conference is to be held in Spain on this theme, Futures for Europe, looking forward at various scenarios on offer up to the year 2030. Key questions for the assembled experts and scholars will be Has EU expansion now ended ? Will the Euro survive and at what price ? Can free mobility be sustained ? What about education policies ? What is Europe's contribution now to international environmental policy after Cancun ? How will the Europe Project fare in the face of the growing power from Brazil, India, and China ? Policy-makers, academic scholars, business, political and community leaders, and Europaeum graduates as representatives of the next generation - are invited - including the author of a key report, former Spanish Prime Minister, Felipe Gonzalez, who led a team of experts who produced a major report in 2010 re-visiting many of these very issues. This event is now set for mid-July in Santander, co-ordinated with our new associate partner the Fundación Ortega Marañón (FOM). More details will emerge via our website.

Brussels Graduate European Policy-Making Seminar

The Europaeum is organising the third annual Policy-Making inside Europe ? taking place in Brussels from June 20th-22nd. This three-day programme of talks, discussions, interviews and special visits involving those at the sharp end of policy and decision-making in Brussels, has been organised with colleagues in Lisbon to focus on how European policy is made in Brussels in a range of fields and disciplines. The programme includes visits to the European Parliament and NATO. Topics will include the making of EU Foreign Policy; The impact of EU Economic Policy; Lisbon Treaty & EU Policy; National Interests & European Politics; EU as a Major Foreign Policy Actor & Internal Market. The Europaeum has up to 10 places available for graduates and postgraduates from member universities. Please send an application letter and CV, with a supporting recommendation from your Tutor/Supervisor. Letters should be received by the Europaeum Office by May 1st for the first round of selections. All participants will need to cover their own travel and contribute €100 towards (accommodation and the special dinners. Please see the event Poster for more details.

Scholarships and Opportunities

DEADLINE ARRIVES ! - TransAtlantic Junior Fellowship

Summer School on The Future of Europe 2030

This year's summer school will take place alongside our annual conference due to be held in the beautiful surroundings in Santander and will run from July 17-23rd. As usual there will be up to 30 places held for Europaeum graduates - three from each full partner member - and at least one for associate members.  There will be the usual mix of discussions, debates, role-playing, and graduate presentations, alongside the major lectures occurring as part of our major annual international event.  Europaeum graduates from a range of disciplines from Law, Economics, Politics, History, Geography, International Relations, and other relevant disciplines, to attend the event To apply, please contact the Europaeum Office and your local Europaeum Liaison Coordinator via e-mail with letter of application, a short CV (max. 2 pages), and a support letter from your supervising professor - by the end of May.

Bursaries for World Leadership UN conference in Lisbon

The Europaeum has, as planned, made four awards for participants to take part in this event - the annual 14th Academic Conference and General Assembly (ACGA) taking place in Lisbon on April 10-16th, 2011.  The four students are Ivo Bronstring, Nora Ratzmann, Lukáš Sedláček, Anna Sakurai (Click here to download the official Press Release for more information). The event - around the themes of world leadership and of the UN - is being hosted at our associate member, the Institute of Political Studies at the Catholic University of Portugal (IEP) and is being run by the International Association for Political Science Students, and will attract scholars, policy-makers, and students from around the world. Click here for more information about conference details, website. IEP students are taking a leading role in the organisation.

Publications & Media

Liberalisms pamphlet

A full print version of the major international conference held in Oxford last year, Liberalisms East and West, is being produced in co-operation with all partners involved in the event to be distributed to libraries and colleagues this summer. A range of speakers from across the globe, including Professors Ronald Dworkin and Steven Lukes from NYU, were joined by luminaries from China, Japan, India, and many other counties - plus participants from partner universities - including Professors Paolo Pombeni from Bologna, and Michael Freeden from Oxford, Henk te Velde from Leiden,plus our professor Joao Espada from the IEP-Lisbon Catholic University

EUROCLIO Newsletter

The Europaeum linked partner EUROCLIO, the European Standing Conference of History Teachers´ Associations, has just published its latest newsletter highlighting a number of events taking place throughout Europe. The Europaeum and EUROCLIO have partnered together in organising the EU-funded programme on Connecting Europe through History. Over the past year we have organised an events series on the topic Experiences and Perceptions of Migration in Europe.

Click here to view the online version of EUROCLIO's latest newsletter

Report of the Month

Federalisms in East and West conference report

The final report of the Europaeum international conference on Federalisms - East and West - India, Europe and North America, which took place on last September in Oxford with top figures in European policy-making, media, and academia (Click here for a full list of Participants and biographies of Speakers), will be published later this month. This conference compared and contrasted federalist ideas and structures across three continents, bringing a wide range of perspectives from our diverse speakers. We have also published a number of follow-up thoughts and reports on our website from some participants, click here to read more about this highly successful conference.

Click here to download the Final Report

Link-of-the-Month : Islam in South East Europe

A new website has recently been launched at Oxford based on a British Academy-funded research project on Contemporary Islam in the Balkans. The results of this two-year project are published on the http://balkanmuslims.com/ website, which contains papers, photos and links relating to the role of Islam and Muslim communities involved in the politics of South East Europe. The project also elicited a workshop on Beyond the Wahhabi Mirage at the European Studies Centre at the University in June 2010, when participants discussed the findings of this pertinent study. Particular attention on the website is therefore given to the change in the context of international actors, the gradual withdrawal of Salafi and Wahhabi groups and the increasingly important role of Turkey-related actors. 

Around the Members

PARIS: Sorbonne opens new campus at Abu Dhabi

The University of Paris - Sorbonne - which via Paris 1 Sorbonne-Pantheon is linked to our association - officially opened an Abu Dhabi campus last month with French Prime Minister, Francois Fillon, and Sheikh Hamed bin Zayed, President of the Crown Prince Court, in attendance. The campus - the first French institution in a Gulf state - is intended to advance university  access in the region, by offering academic student majors in Humanities and Law, with plans to add more degree options in the years to come. Click here to read more about the opening.

OXFORD: new Humanities opportunities

The University of Oxford has just announced eight new post-doctoral fellowships spanning a range of departments in the Humanities division -  making Oxford as one of the leading institutions supporting early career researchers in the area. The fellowships include posts in ancient science, gender theory, Arabic socio-linguistics, and digital Humanities. Applications for these positions are being accepted until March 23, 2011. Click here to find out more about these exciting opportunities.

HELSINKI: University ranks among leaders in on-line publishing

The University of Helsinki has recently been highly rated in the Webometrics ranking system, which ranks the world's universities based on open online publication activities. Helsinki was ranked 7th in Europe - and 62nd worldwide. As online capabilities and digital resources increase, the importance of providing open access to online publications is paramount to staying ahead and at the cutting edge of research. Helsinki has made significant efforts putting up research articles, studies, and resources on the web for public access - and the result has been a leap in the dissemination of the important research coming from the University. Click here for more information.

Footnote-of-the-Month

Lord Patten, who is one of the Europaeum's Trustees, and who as Chancellor of the University of Oxford, has also been a supporter of the association down the years and has chaired events for us for time to time, has just been appointed to yet another key post. He has just been appointed to chair the new BBC Trust, whose task is to protect what is probably the finest public service broadcasting outfit in the world, often snared into the web of politics, but which retains its worldwide reputation for impartiality and accuracy. Its website too is one of the very best of instant resources. Click here to read the latest announcement from the BBC. We wish Lord Patten every success and salute his ability to manage so many critical and vital public posts.

Endnote

We are busy planning this year's annual Classics Colloquium - our 10th in the series- due to be hosted at the University of Helsinki, on the theme of Strangers and Friends (more details to follow), much discussed in Ancient literature of course - and chosen by ballot among professors and young scholars at last year's hugely successful event in Krakow on Death and the AfterLife (check out event details here). One of many highlights were the toasts at the special conference dinner, arranged by Rector Karel Musiol at the University's special hunting lodge which dates from the Middle Ages. Our Secretary-General teased participants that as in a previous era, perhaps delegates might converse over dinner in Latin, surveyed by the array of stuffed bucks, deer, even bear, and other animal heads adorning the walls. However, over the special house brandy, still served in the famous bent bottles, Professor Kazimierz Korus, director of the Ancient Greece Studies Institute and the Classic Philology Institute, launched into praise for the association for its initiatives on behalf of Classicists, and then led our happy throng in a choral rendition wishing the Europaeum 'many more years' of good work: in Latin  Plurimos annos, plurimos, plurimos annos plurimos, plurimos, and then, in Greek polla, polla ete polla, polla ! We remain in good cheer for our anniversary event.