Europaeum Bulletin, May 2010

In May's issue:

• Forthcoming Events: Migration and Ethnicity workshop (Oxford); Migration and Politics workshop (Leiden); International Graduate Debate (Lisbon); Jenkins Panel Debate (Oxford)
  
• Programmes: MA - final deadline; 2010 Summer School on Media
• Scholarships & Grants: US Junior Fellowship; Federalisms  conference Bursaries; MA course scholarship; Europaeum internships
• Publications & Media: European Migration workshop essays
  
• Report-of-the-Month: Liberalisms East and West -  report
• Link-of-the-Month: Universities should be free - Standpoint  journal
  
• Around the Members: Oxford colleagues on the Euro-Med; Libraries in Leiden; East European Studies in Bologna
  
• Footnote-of-the-Month: Measuring international collaboration 
  
• Endnote-of-the-Month: Lessons from History

Forthcoming Events

Migration and Ethnicity - Oxford workshop

One or two places may still be open for Europaeum graduates to join a fifth event in the Connecting Europe through History – Experiences and Perceptions of Migrations Project to be held in Oxford on May 21st - 22nd. The Europaeum Graduate Research Workshop on Migration, Ethnicity & the Making of  Modern Europe hosted with University of Oxford Faculty of History. Speakers will include: Professor Robert Evans (Regius Professor of History), Professor Peter Pulzer (Emeritus Professor of Government), plus  a number of upcoming younger colleagues - Dr. Mateo Ballester (Madrid), Dr. Renee Hirschon (Oxford), Dr Nando Sigona (Oxford). Please see the Workshop Poster and the Programme for more information.

Migration and Politics - Leiden workshop

A few places are also available for Europaeum graduates for the sixth event linked to the Project - a Graduate Research Workshop on Migration, Political Parties & Public Rhetoric in Contemporary Europe - taking place in Leiden from June 3rd - 5th, comprising lectures, discussions, and graduate presentations (working language is English.) The event is open to all graduates notably from Cultural Studies, History, European Studies, International Relations, Political Science, Public Administration, Law, and Sociology. To apply, please contact the office with a letter of intent, demonstrating your interest in the event, a short CV (max. 2 pages), and a support letter from your supervising professor. For further information see the event details on our website. Please also distribute the Workshop Poster to students and colleagues.

Europaeum Student Debate

Four Europaeum graduates will receive bursaries to take part in an exciting  three-day international debate as part of the annual international conference and summer school hosted by our new associate member, the Institute for Political Studies, Catholic University of Portugal (IEP-UCP) from June 24-26th 2010. This year's theme is on Political Dimensions of the Economic Crisis: The Future of the Market Economy and Democracy and will include a special debate on Can Democracy Work without a Market Economy? with graduates from the Europaeum, IEP-UCP, Boston University, Brown University, Georgetown University, and the LSE. Interested Europaeum graduate students should contact the office with a CV, a statement of interest and a recommendation from their supervisor. Click here for a copy of the current Programme.

Europaeum Graduate Panel Debates

What next for Europe - after the Euro crisis and Lisbon Treaty ? This will be the theme of two Europaeum panel debates taking place in Oxford this month, one linked to the Jenkins Scholars scheme, and one to a study tour involving more than 20 Leiden Law graduates to Oxford, both being coordinated by the Europaeum. We plan to involve Professors from Oxford, Geneva and Leiden, each joined by two current Jenkins Scholars in the first debate and two Law graduates in the second,  and we hope Professor David Marquand, former chair of the Oxford Europaeum Group and a former chief economics advisor to the EU will also be able to take part.

Programmes

MA in European History - Leiden, Paris, Oxford: FINAL DEADLINE

The final deadline for applications for the Europaeum’s pioneering MA in European History and Civilisation with terms spent at Leiden, Paris and Oxford, is June 1st for late applications. For students view on the course see a summary of results plus a selection of anonymous quotes taken from recent evaluation forms. Also check out an article from the Europaeum Review for additional students' perspectives on the course. For further information, see Application details on our website. Please distribute the attached poster to students and colleagues.

Brussels Policy-Making Seminar

The Europaeum is organising the third annual Policy-Making inside Europe ? taking place in Brussels from 21st – 23th June 2010. 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. Places will be allocated as received. Please see the event Poster for more details.

2010 Europaeum Summer School - Bologna

The 2010 Europaeum Summer School on The Media, Europe & Democracy  takes place in Bologna on September 5 – 10th 2010 - with   lectures, discussions, workshops, debates, practical exercises on relations between the democracy and the role and operation of the media, questions of identity and public space, across Europe. The five-day programme will also investigate ‘inside’ perceptions of the EU by European citizens, and ‘outside’ perceptions from non-European actors, and their impact on notions of European citizenship, public debate and participatory democracy.

The event is, as usual, open to all Europaeum graduates. Applicants are asked to send applications to their local Europaeum Liaison Officer with a letter of intent, demonstrating your interest in the event, a short CV (max. 2 pages), and a support letter from your supervising professor. For further inquiries, please contact the Europaeum Office. The main deadline for applications is the end of May, 2010.

Scholarships and Grants

Europaeum MA Scholarship

The Europaeum is offering a bursary worth €2,500 to support one outstanding student on the Europaeum MA in European History and Civilisation at Oxford, Leiden and Paris, starting in late September. This Europaeum scholarship is open only to recent graduates of Jagiellonian University, Krakow, and Charles University, Prague (applicants must have graduated within the last two or three years). For applications, please apply to the MA Programme via Leiden University, indicating you wish to be considered for this award.

Federalisms in East and West ........

Applications are invited from Europaeum post-graduates, doctoral and post-doctoral researchers, for fully supported bursaries to attend this two-day international conference September 28-30th, 2010, in Oxford on the theme of Federalisms - East and West  - India, Europe and North America. The event will look at current thinking and contrasting concepts of Federalism in Europe across the world. The Academic Director is Professor David Marquand, former Chair of the Oxford Europaeum Group, member of the Europaeum Council, and former Principal of Mansfield College, Oxford University. Speakers already due to take part include Professor Baron (Meghnad) Desai; Senator Gary Hart; Roger Cohen of the New York Times; Professor Yves Meny; and many others.

The Europaeum bursary will support one leading young scholar from each Europaeum partner institution to participate in the Federalisms conference, covering  (economy) travel, accommodation and other related costs, covered (Each bursary is worth the equivalent of €500). Applications including a statement letter, CV, two academic references, confirmation of availability and ability to visit Oxford, should reach Dr. Paul Flather the Secretary-General at the Europaeum Office by 1st June 2010. Please see the Award Notice for further information.

Europaeum Internships

The Europaeum offers internships to doctoral or post-doctoral scholars from Europaeum universities throughout the year. We are committed to providing engaging and fruitful work experience - with opportunity to pursue research studies in Oxford libraries, join lectures etc. In this way, we seek to extend the mission of the Europaeum to build European leadership, foster diversity and provide opportunities to supplement research and background education.

We offer interns for one-three months, and each intern will be asked to support general office work, work on current events and will be given a research project to work on and help develop. We will help in finding housing and cover the costs, as part of a support package also for food and travel.

If you know anyone who might be interested, please send a CV and covering letter, including details of two referees (preferably one academic and one professional) to the the Europaeum office

Publications & Media

The collection of essays entitled Facets of Migration in Contemporary Europe: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Specific Challenges, which uses a multidisciplinary approach to directly address the role played by the EU on member states’ migration policies, has now been published based on a special graduate workshop coordinated and run through the Europaeum on European Migration in the 21st Century: a Challenge to Nation-States? at Charles University, Prague, in spring 2008. Irina Angelescu, a PhD candidate in international history and politics at the Graduate Institute of Geneva, and Sergiu Gherghina, a PhD researcher at the Department of Political Science, University of Leiden, worked together with the Europaeum Secretary-General Dr. Paul Flather as editors of this volume. Copies of the essays will be delivered to each Europaeum partner.

Report of the Month

Liberalism Research Group

The full conference report of this important event co-sponsored last year with many other leading bodies, is now ready. It will appear in print and also appear on our website shortly. The event included many luminaries drawn from all over the world, including Professor Ronnie Dworkin and Steven Lukes (NYU),  colleagues from Latin America, Japan,  China, India and many other places, and of course Europe in the form of  Europaeum partner institutions such as Michael Freeden and Tim Garton Ash (Oxford) Henk te Velde (Leiden), Paolo Pombeni (Bologna) and Professor Joao Espada (our new associate member, the Politics Department at Lisbon).

As a taster for the important findings that emerged from this event, please see a transcript of Michael Freeden's introductory talk on Competing Liberalisms as Conceptual Configurations.  Professor Timothy Garton Ash  earlier wrote a lively piece in the New York Times entitled "A Liberal Translation," which explored certain key ideas from the conference. For more background on the event See the final programme, a list of participants, and a full list of sponsors, for more information.

Link-of-the-Month

STANDPOINT: Freedom and Crisis in higher education

Standpoint’s is a new critical right of centre magazine whose core mission is to "celebrate our civilization, its arts and its values - in particular democracy, debate and freedom of speech - at a time when they are under threat. The latest issues looks at universities in crisis in the UK due to  government budget cuts - which could see the closing of up to 30 institutions as well as massive cutbacks. In a feature article , it is argued that the nationalisation of higher education has forced UK universities to become subject to government controls, which greatly restrict their financial and logistic freedoms. These debates on autonomy and freedom are raging right across Europe, and the question of aping the US is ever present. Here the author, Terence Kealey, again believes the answer lies in adopting a model similar to that found in the United States, where privatisation of higher education has apparently allowed universities to thrive and grow to become the world's best. he believes a model whereby universities are granted significant freedoms, while still being heavily subsidised by a 'hands-off' government, would offer the best solution for cash-strapped UK universities.

Click here to read the full article

Around the Members:

OXFORD: Oxford colleagues publishes on Mediterranean borders

Kalypso Nicolaidis, Professor of International Relations  at the University of Oxford, and Dimitar Bechev, Research Fellow at the European Studies Centre, Oxford, have published a new book on Mediterranean Frontiers - Borders, Conflict and Memory in a Transnational World. The authors look at the impact of political boundaries upon North Africa, the Middle East, and South and South East Europe, along with pressures from European and economic integration, the resurgence of nationalism, and refugee and security concerns. They explore the politics of memory, and ask whether echoes from the imperial past - Ottoman and colonial - could provide the basis for conflict resolution, region-building and economic integration. For a full synopsis and details of the book see Mediterranean Frontiers - Borders, Conflict and Memory in a Transnational World, published by I.B. Tauris.

LEIDEN: Four km of "hidden" dissertations

The library at Leiden University has many treasures, including a collection of an estimated 400,000 uncatalogued dissertations or theses dating from 1580 to 1990.They occupy four kilometres of shelf space, and include dissertations from such eminent scholars as Albert Einstein, Marie Curie, Henri Bergson, Niels Bohr, Émile Durkheim, Otto Hahn, Carl Gustav Jung, Kurt Lewin, J Robert Oppenheimer, Max Planck, Helmuth Plessner, Luigi Pirandello, Gustav Stresemann, Otto Warburg, Max Weber, and Alfred Wegener.

The amazing discovery came about when Leiden University library staff searched for around 100 authors among the uncatalogued dissertations. This led to the discovery of these important pieces of history. Check out the full article on the University World News website.

BOLOGNA: new interdisciplinary degree in Eastern European Studies

The University of Bologna is announcing a call for applications for a two-year Master of Arts in Interdisciplinary Research and Studies on Eastern Europe (MIREES). The international Master of Arts MIREES is awarded by the Faculty of Political Science "Roberto Ruffilli", University of Bologna, in cooperation with the following partner universities: Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania; Corvinus University of Budapest; and Saint-Petersburg State University. The innovative graduate programme, taught entirely in English, is designed for students that have an undergraduate background in Economics, Politics, International Relations, History, Agricultural or Cultural studies, and would now like to acquire a specialized, in-depth knowledge of the contemporary Eastern Europe.

Applications for this program are currently being accepted. For further information on how to apply, please see the application notice.

Footnote-of-the-Month

From time to time, we have featured results from various league tables of university performance. Whether we like these or not, they are here to stay. Indeed, some have argued that the Europaeum needs to be study league tables when considering potential new members. Now a new higher education index has been developed by the British Council with the Economist Intelligence Unit, which assesses a country's higher education institutions based on how "open" they are to international collaboration. The index is actually comprised of three different indices which seek to measure national policies, international student mobility and international research collaboration. Thus countries that strongly support outbound and inbound student mobility, establish university branches in foreign countries and allow foreign university branches to open, and facilitate international research collaborations, score highly on the index. Germany tops the list with a "balanced focus on importing and exporting education," followed closely by the UK, Australia, China and Malaysia.

For more information, please see the University World News report, "Three nations tops in collaboration".

Endnote

Lessons from History !

We are delighted that Margaret MacMillan, Warden of St Antony's College, Oxford, has agreed to join the Oxford Europaeum Group. She gave a distinguished Europaeum Lecture at Geneva last year on 90 years on – lessons for peacemakers from 1918? She has recently published an important book on learning from history. She describes how important it is to have an accurate, broad knowledge of the past in order to understand and make sense of the present in the article "History - handle with care" appearing in a recent edition of the periodical Oxford Today. The article provides a brief synopsis of her highly acclaimed book The Uses and Abuses of History. Please see The Spectator and The Times for full reviews of her publication.