Eurasia Peace Studies Exchange – Evaluation and Planing Meeting in Tromsø

IFSH Eurasia expert Dr. Anna Kreikemeyer and MPS course coordinator Dr. Patricia Schneider travelled to Tromsø in northern Norway from 18 to 20 November. There the final meeting of the Eurasia Peace Studies Exchange (EPSE) project took place. The team members evaluated the past work and discussed plans for future third-party funding applications.

The academic EPSE network (http://site.uit.no/epse/) was founded in 2017 by the Centre for Peace Studies at Tromsø University and IFSH. Partner institutes include the Faculties of International Relations of the State Universities of Odessa and Tbilisi, the Academy of Education Sciences in Kiev and the Faculty of Social Anthropology of the American University of Central Asia in Bishkek. The network serves to exchange knowledge and expertise on the post-Soviet and Eurasian space. Between 2017 and 2019, the team will develop joint peace research modules based on selected conflict areas and test them in intensive workshops. At the same time, there was a diverse exchange of students, doctoral students and researchers. For the future, the EPSE network strives to develop and strengthen corresponding study programmes at the participating institutes. An Erasmus agreement between the universities of Tromsø and Hamburg was also concluded as part of the project. This enables the continuous exchange of lecturers and students for the IFSH Peace and Security Studies programme.