The Knowledge Exchange Partnership between CEELBAS and Russian Media House, a London-based publishing company, has recently seen three interviews with CEELBAS scholars appear in the Russian-language magazine 'Pulse UK'.

A summary of the recent CEELBAS / Chatham House joint seminar on 'The Parliament, the Presidency and Elections in Russia' is now available on the Chatham House website.

Control Risks, an independent, specialist risk consultancy, is currently recruiting a full-time Analyst to cover Central and Southeastern Europe. The role, based in London, entails substantial research and travel opportunities to the region, as well as consulting directly with clients. Detailed knowledge of political, business and security developments in the region is essential, as is postgraduate-level study, knowledge of a local language, and prior work or living experience in the region.

The University of Manchester is offering a range of awards to which candidates working on topics related to Russia and Eastern Europe are eligible to apply. The two main awards, which comprise a fee-bursary and a maintenance grant, are ESRC studentships in Language-Based Area Studies and the University-funded President’s Doctoral Scholar Awards.

For further details, fees, application form and deadline, please visit: www.ceelbas.ac.uk/workshops/polish_workshops

The Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies is delighted to launch a new digital repository of teaching and self-study resources to support language training for research on Central and Eastern Europe and Russia.

Scholars from Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova, Russia and Ukraine are invited by Chatham House, in partnership with the Robert Bosch Stiftung, to apply for a new Visiting Fellowship. The Fellowship provides an opportunity for researchers at the start of their careers to advance their knowledge, develop research skills, and build links with policy and academic communities in the UK, Germany and other EU countries.

There is a vacancy for a 3-year post-doctoral Research Associate in Russian at the University of Cambridge, linked to a project on the cultural and social history of information technologies in Russia. View details.

Connecting Communities via Language: Reading Strategies and Translation Skills for Post-Intermediate Learners of Polish

The ESRC has launched a new Knowledge Exchange Opportunities Scheme to provide funding for social science researchers and stakeholders within public, private or civil society organisations to undertake knwoledge exchange and impact generating activities.

On 25th March 2011 CEELBAS hosted a joint workshop with the other LBAS Centres, highlighting the impact of the LBAS Initaitive and its significant achievements in knowledge exchange and user engagement. Discussion with senior figures from our Funders (HEFCE, SFC, ESRC, AHRC), knowldge exchange partners, area studies academics and experts addreesed some of the key challenges for the future and considered ways to define, measure and sustain research excellence and impact. Roundtable Report.

The North West Doctoral Training Centre, jointly run by the Universities of Lancaster, Liverpool and Manchester, is offering 3 PhD studentships in Language-Based Area Studies, in fields which include Russian and East European Studies.

The Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS) provides funding support for seminars and workshops that advance its research agenda on Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, the Caucasus and Central Asia – details of which are available at www.ceelbas.ac.uk/research

The Department of Russian and Slavonic Studies at the University of
Sheffield invites applications for a fully-funded PhD scholarship dedicated to the folklore and literature of the Caucasus region. Proposals may pertain to
the folklore and literature itself, the history of scholarship on the question, and the role they have played in the formation of social and cultural
identity.

The School of Languages, Linguistics and Cultures at the University of Manchester expects to offer one AHRC Doctoral Studentship to a candidate starting on PhD research in Russian and East European Studies in September 2011.

NEW! Workshops and Summer School for Post-Intermediate Learners of Polish

Spaces are still available on this newly-designed specialist Polish language training for postgraduate students and researchers. Further information, including fees, deadlines and registration guidance can be found at: www.ceelbas.ac.uk/workshops/polish_workshops

‘Research without Frontiers: inter-university cooperation in East European area studies’

The programme for the CEELBAS Postgraduate Ethics Workshop on Saturday October 30th is now available - click on the image below to view an enlarged version. 

The CEELBAS Language Repository now houses a new set of resources for teachers of beginners and intermediate level Polish. There are a total of 24 units for each level, designed to supplement in-class teaching, plus examples of materials adapted for student self-study. Instructions (in English) are provided for each unit to enable easy adaptation to other languages. 

As part of the British Council ENSPIRE project to promote the strategic partnership between the University of Birmingham and the Kazakh-British Technical University, a new beginners-level Kazakh language course will be launched at the Centre for Russian and East European Studies, University of Birmingham, in Semester 1 of academic year 2010/11. This course is open to all Masters and Doctoral students from across the CEELBAS network. Further details are available here.

Applications are inivited for a three-year MPhil/PhD UCL Impact Scholarship to conduct research on Russian legal cases in foreign courts under the supervision of Professor Alena Ledeneva at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, starting in September 2010.

Following a new strategic partnership between CEELBAS and The Russian Media House publishing company, the first in a projected series of articles covering the expertise of CEELBAS partners appeared in the UK Russian-language journal ‘New Style’ in January 2010 (issue 79). In this article Dr Maria Rubins of UCL School of Slavonic Studies presented her research on Russian Émigré Prose, discussing the various cultural-linguistic complexities faced by bilingual Russian émigré writers past and present, and their difficulties gaining recognition and acceptance whilst working within a foreign literary milieu. With particular reference to Russian émigré publications in interwar France, Dr Rubins described her work as an editor and publisher of these rare and often long out-of-print texts, highlighting the orthographic and technical challenges of such work. The original article (in Russian) is available here.

Following the completion of a CEELBAS Network Project run by Marta Jenkala and Christopher Moseley to investigate how the teaching and testing of East European and Slavonic languages at the UCL School of Slavonic and East European Studies (SSEES) maps onto the Council of Europe’s Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR), a summary of the project and a report on its findings and conclusions is available here. Further project details can be found in the Research section of the website. A presentation of the findings of the project, to which participants from across the CEELBAS Network will be invited, is being planned for Spring 2010 and will be publicised here.

Following completion of a pioneering CEELBAS-funded language project to create materials to develop the language skills of heritage speakers of Polish, the ‘Polish for Foreigners’ online language course is now available at www.polishforforeigners.org.