Studium Balticum - Russian and EU: new institutions, new elites, new images

Venue: Kaliningrad (Russia)
Period: Jul. 17 - 24, 2011
Application deadline: N/A
 
N.B. The working language of the Summer School is Russian.

At the base of this event is the traditional summer school format with maximum involvement of participants into the discussion on the most relevant questions in the field of international relations. Young researchers completing practical tasks under the supervision of specialists will be an important part of the school.

As part of the event there will also be independent work for the participants. They will be divided into 5 international research groups and will study specific country examples of EU-Russia interactions. Every group will consist of 8 members, representing all the countries taking part in the summer school.

The goal of these research groups will be to analyze the relations between Russia and EU member-states (Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia) and also Russia-EU relations as a whole. The young researchers, with the advisory help of Russian and Baltic specialists, will independently do a series of research procedures:

1. Monitoring and doing content-analysis of messages from relevant politicians on the internet and mass media for the July 2010 – July 2011 period.

2. Street surveys of Kaliningrad inhabitants with the goal of identifying the current images of certain EU member-states and the EU as a whole in the westmost region of Russia.

3. Expert assessment (meetings with the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry representatives in Kaliningrad, Polish General consulate, Lithuanian General Consulate, Office of the Latvian Embassy, The Kaliningrad Government agency of international and interregional connections).

The end product of the research groups’ actions will be in the form of reports with a list of propositions for the political elites of Russia and the EU, based on their research of the country cases during the school. The results will be presented on the last day of the youth summer school and evaluated by the jury.

Students will be responsible for covering the costs of their own travel to and from Kaliningrad. All costs in Kaliningrad will be covered by the organizers.

Please find further information for the application on the IKBFU website. Here you can download the application form and the program outline. Please remember that the working language of the program is Russian.

Vladimir Balobaev
Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University
e-mail: vbalobaev@kantiana.ru