The CEU-SU Joint Academic Initiative aims to strengthen academic capacities at both institutions, to produce valuable academic results, as well as to foster mutually beneficent academic cooperation between them. The Initiative will provide financial support to competitively selected cooperative research and education projects in academic areas strategically important for both universities. The eligible activities include:
- Cooperative educational activities (e.g. student and faculty exchanges, joint development or teaching of courses, seminars and summer schools);
- Cooperative research projects aimed at producing original knowledge;
- Joint exploratory and planning activities such as exploratory workshops and meetings to develop joint ideas, research and education plans, etc.
The projects should start in 2011-2012 academic year (the earliest start date is August 2011) and have the maximum duration of 24 months.
Designed to strengthen the existing cooperation between CENS and IPC, this project will identify and address key questions in a number of policy areas where EU’s and Turkey's interests may be complementary and/or reconcilable. Convergence or divergence in several of these policy areas has direct bearing on the common neighborhood, where both Turkey and EU have mutual interests. The search for a consistent approach that would serve those mutual interests is a timely – even urgent - task that the project will address.
The project will (a) develop concrete proposals for complementary and, possibly, converging neighborhood policies that would put forth fresh ideas for enhanced cooperation, and (b) examine two significant policy areas that are relevant to those mutual interests in the region and beyond. These are (a) Energy: although Turkey’s geopolitical importance for the EU’s energy supply sources and routes is clear, the Energy chapter has not been opened for negotiations, and (b) Transport: Another chapter that has not been opened despite Turkey’s strategic and commercial significance for EU’s transatlantic network. In addition, the project will identify and consider resolvable differences in three other policy areas: Intellectual Property, Free Movement of Goods, and Enterprise & Industrial Policy.
It will be conducted in three consecutive stages: project preparation; implementation (research, workshops, and preparation of policy papers); and publication and communication. Two workshops will bring together a working group of experts with policy makers for an assessment of the three key questions and to draft policy papers. The project will result in three major policy papers, which will be communicated at a panel discussion and press conference in Brussels.
This project proposes to contribute to a development of a new database on conflicts worldwide. It begins doing so with a focus on a sample of conflicts in post-communist Eurasia and the Middle East during the post Cold War period (1990-2010). The overall objective of the data collection is to collect time-series data on all ethnic groups (minorities and majorities) in the two target regions (post-communist Eurasia and the Middle East) to facilitate comprehensive understanding of conflict dynamics as they affect all groups in a conflict situation. The proposed project fits in an on-going effort coordinated by the University of Maryland to build on the existing and successful Minorities at Risk (MAR) Project and its new project MAROB (Minorities at Risk Organizational Behavior). The major shortcoming of the original MAR project lays on selecting on the dependent variable (mobilized minority groups). The project addresses this problem by analyzing both majority and minority groups as well as analyzing both mobilizing and non mobilized groups. After the initial training by the University of Maryland on data collection, the research team of Sabanci and CEU will collect data which will turn into a research paper at the end of the research funding term.
In recent years, there has been a “memory boom” in Hungary and Turkey (as well as in other parts of the world). Numerous biographical and autobiographical works (in the form of books, interviews, films, TV serials, blogs) have opened up new spaces for challenging official historiographies and drawing attention to the complexities of lived experience at both the macro and micro levels. Yet, there are very few works that develop memory studies from a gender perspective. Much of the literature on memory (both in its academic and non-academic form) remains gender-blind or gender-biased. Despite the centrality of gender in shaping experiences of war and political violence (as the United Nations Security Council Resolutions 1325 and 1820 emphasize), there is a scarcity of research on “gendered memories of war and political violence” in Turkey and Hungary. As a result, women’s gendered experiences of war and political violence often remain silenced, and men’s experiences remain understudied and untheorized as “gendered” experiences shaped by particular practices and discourses of masculinity. Bringing together CEU and SU expertise in gender, memory and militarism studies, this project seeks to contribute to filling this gap in the literature through original research, comparative analysis, international networking through academic conferences, and student exchange.
The project is a research, teaching, and student exchange project on gendered memories of war and political violence in Hungary and Turkey with the following expected output: joint development and co-teaching of a graduate course on gendered memories of war and political violence (Spring 2012); an international academic conference (Istanbul Spring 2012); a graduate student conference on gendered memories of war and political violence (Budapest Fall 2012); a co-edited volume by Altınay and Petö for the European Journal of Women’s Studies (EJWS) which will include a co-authored introductory review essay (2015); a co-authored academic article to be published in another international journal (2014); and two separate articles (one on Turkey, the other on Hungary) by the authors on their part of the research (2014-2015).
This project attempts to inter-connect two leading departments in the area by creating conditions for the short-run exchange of researchers between Budapest and Istanbul. We propose three visits of faculty (and potentially doctoral students) to each university. In total, six researchers will have a chance to develop a close academic relationship with colleagues from the visited university. The visiting researchers will give an academic talk at the host institution. They will also provide consultation on their area of specialty as well as exchange ideas on both research and education during the visit. By bringing researchers of similar interests together, these visits will hopefully lead to common research projects, to co-organized workshops and to exchange of faculty (for research as well as for teaching specialized courses as visiting professors). We also hope that this partnership might later develop into partnerships in European funded projects (such as those in the framework programs).
This project seeks to contribute to fostering academic and policy discussion around the process of Euro-Mediterranean integration and co-operation as a key issue in both European Union (EU) and Turkish policy-making as well as in Turkey-EU dialog. The proposed research will seek to re-conceptualise Euro-Mediterranean integration dynamics by enhancing the understanding of the process from within the EU and Turkish contexts respectively, emphasizing the respective role of state (government, parliament, EU institutions) and non-state actors (NGOs, business, think tanks, advocacy networks). It will refocus our attention on Euro-Mediterranean co-operation as a multi-level political and social process. Thereby, it specifically recasts the respective role of specific groups of actors in relation to the political quest for greater Euro-Mediterranean integration and in influencing co-operation and integration processes. An explicit focus of the project is placed on actors outside the national executives: we propose to look at parliamentary actors in the Turkish domestic arena and at North African and European transnational non-governmental organisations and networks. Moreover, we will revisit the practice of intergovernmental policy dialogue in the Euro-Mediterranean negation contexts, specifically the role of political elites (as members of the executive). Thereby, rather than offering a particular theory on Euro-Mediterranean integration the proposed research is intended to lead to an enhanced understanding of the respective spheres and of the relevance of actor-specific dynamics. Results of the project will help to better understand present and future dynamics in the wider region, as well as the potential of Turkey as a candidate for EU accession in facilitating co-operation between the Northern and Southern shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
This exploratory project seeks to understand and explain the evolving role of rising regional powers in international politics. The case of Turkey is used here as a vantage point to understand the role of regional powers in the post-cold war era, with a special focus on Turkey’s own ‘eastern neighborhoods’, namely the Caucasus and Central Asia (here referred to as the ‘Caspian region’).
The project’s aim is three-fold:
- understand Turkey’s foreign policy towards the Caucasus and Central Asia;
- focus on three key areas: cultural exchange, energy politics, and conflict resolution;
- shed light on the evolution of the international system by accounting for the role of rising powers in global politics.
The output of the project includes capacity-building and knowledge exchange. The project proposes to build academic capacity in both institutions - by means of knowledge exchange - on an area (the Caspian region) and an actor (Turkey) of increasing strategic importance. The project also aims to further inter-institutional collaboration, with regard to both research and teaching.