ASTON CENTRE FOR EUROPE (ACE) / CENTRE FOR EAST EUROPEAN LANGUAGE-BASED AREA STUDIES (CEELBAS) / SUSSEX EUROPEAN INSTITUTE (SEI)

A one-day international conference was held at the University of Oxford in June 2009 to mark the twentieth anniversary of the ‘bloodless’ democratic revolutions that spread from Poland’s Gdańsk shipyards across East-Central Europe. The conference was held under the patronage of the Embassy of the Republic of Poland, with sponsorship from CEELBAS, the M. B. Grabowski Foundation, and support from St. Antony’s College. It was co-ordinated by Dr Robert Pyrah, the CEELBAS Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Cultural Processes in East-Central Europe, with Filip Lachowski, President of the Oxford University Polish Society.

Spaces of Nationhood: Landscape and Identity after Communism

A letter emphasising the importance of interdisciplinarity across the social sciences and humanities was published in the Times Higher Education Supplement. The letter was written by CEELBAS Director Robin Aizlewood and signed by the Directors of all five Language Based Area Studies Centres.

Dr Felix Ciută (UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies) has been awarded an ESRC/SSRC Collaborative Visiting Fellowship at the Paul H Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), Johns Hopkins University, in the Spring term 2010. At SAIS, Felix will conduct research on his project "Lily-Pad Geopolitics: Strategic Representations of Romania in the Global War on Terror".

On 12 and 13 June 2009, the Wider Europe network held a seminar in Bratislava in collaboration with CEELBAS, the Economic and Social Research Council, the Slovak Foreign Policy Association and the Comenius University. The principal focus of the conference was the impact of the new Member States on the making of the European Union’s policy towards its eastern neighbours and, in particular, their preferences for the Eastern Partnership.

The Centre is organising, across its Network, regular thematic and/or (inter-)disciplinary workshops including participation by international scholars and non-area specialists to take forward the research agenda. Please see CEELBAS network projects for further information.

Please see details of forthcoming CEELBAS events

The CEELBAS Database of Expertise is an online directory listing academic staff from the CEELBAS partner institutions with expertise on Central and Eastern Europe. This database has been set up in order to serve the purposes of knowledge exchange with the user community and to facilitate collaboration between academic specialists in the region. The database will also be expanding to include CEELBAS doctoral students and International Affiliate members.

The London in Motion project consists of two series of extra-curricular documentary film workshops. This year's focus will be on London as well as East Europeans living in London. During the workshops UCL postgraduate students and staff as well as non-academics from the wider community will learn to apply the basic principles and tools of documentary film making.

CEELBAS Research Fellow Nat Copsey and fellow Birmingham academic Carolyn Moore have been awarded €30 000 by the European Commission for the organisation of a high level two day conference at the University of Birmingham on the future of Europe. “Bringing the Policy Back In: A Substantive Agenda for the New Union” will provide a forum for academic-practitioner dialogue, debate and interchange of ideas. The emphasis of this conference is placed firmly on policy analysis, addressing the future scope and reach of key EU policy areas in the following four areas:  Energy and Climate Change; the EU’s Role in the World; Migration; Social and Welfare Standards across the EU; Reform of the Single Market: priorities, policy and action; and the enlargement of the euro area. More detailed information will be available from autumn 2008.

The Centre is organising, across its Network, regular thematic and/or (inter-)disciplinary workshops including participation by international scholars and non-area specialists to take forward the research agenda. Please see CEELBAS network projects for further information.