The biggest challenge to media freedom and independent journalism today is the systemic political corruption in which private interests shape the decision-making process in state bodies and institutions. Increasingly, a model of captive, politically instrumentalized news media financed by owners, corporations, social and political groups, or governments, is becoming dominant in most parts of the world. This has significant consequences on independent media and journalism.

This intensive one-week course facilitates the exchange of ideas and cooperative projects among mediation scholars, practitioners, trainers, and students in the East and West. In addition to offering an introduction to mediation, the program provides a teaching and training template for mediation training for scholars and practitioners from around the world to adapt for use in their home countries.
 

The introduction of lifelong learning (LLL) in European universities has been discussed extensively at policy level since early 2000 in various contexts and with different arguments. Among others the arguments of the so-called knowledge society and its need for a qualified workforce, the European demographics and the extended university's mission have all been invoked to highlight the importance of lifelong learning and the role played by universities in helping communities and individuals to meet professional and societal challenges.

The importance of territory in the current world order is undeniable.  Recent years have seen an explosion of empirical and normative scholarly interest on the impact of migration, globalization and state succession on territorial sovereignty across many disciplines. In addition to the more “traditional” territorial disputes, mass migration has raised new dilemmas over territorial ownership, peoplehood and statehood. 

Some see the current nationalist turn in politics worldwide, with its crackdowns on international migration, proposals to limit trade and slash budgets for humanitarian and development aid, as the beginning of the end of globalization.

The aim of this summer school is to examine the field of migration studies with a focus on three key aspects:

(1) reflecting on “migration studies” as a discipline and critically examining the assumptions that underlie the production of knowledge about migrants and migration;
(2) reflecting on the process of migration research fieldwork and of conducting work “in the field” with migrants and other related actors;

With the recent adoption of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the call by UN Secretary General for a “revolution” in the use of data for sustainable development, geospatial technologies have tremendous potential to effectively and efficiently monitor SDG progress. In the fifteen years since the adoption of the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), the amount of data available, as well as data collection and processing methods have changed substantially.

According to the UNHCR, approximately 67 million people are currently displaced around the world as a result of the unprecedented levels of armed conflict. Similarly, millions of people are migrating in search of better economic opportunities with about 258 million people now living in a country which is not the country of their birth.  Refugee and migrant children are often excluded from early childhood settings and schools alongside others who are also excluded on the grounds of disability, race, language, religion, gender, and poverty.

In recent decades Internationalization-at-Home (IaH) has been viewed by many European universities as a solution for providing students the global competencies required from professionals working in an international and interconnected society. The goal of IaH is to transform classrooms and campuses into spaces that intentionally promote intercultural, international, and global learning.

This intensive one-week course facilitates the exchange of ideas and cooperative projects among mediation scholars, practitioners, trainers, and students in the East and West. In addition to offering an introduction to mediation, the program provides a teaching and training template for mediation training for scholars and practitioners from around the world to adapt for use in their home countries.
 

Political Psychology is a discipline that experienced significant growth in the Anglo-American academic world in recent years. However, it has only started to flourish in Central and Eastern Europe nowadays. Its research is dedicated to understanding how we, humans, perceive and react to the world around us, especially on our interactions with political systems.

Recent philosophical discussions about discrimination have focused on what makes discrimination wrongful in paradigmatic cases, such as in examples involving sexist hiring committees or racist university admissions procedures. The purpose of this course is to provide a forum within which to build upon these foundations by exploring the further complications that arise in more controversial cases of the kind that we encounter most commonly. Throughout the course, we will explore questions such as the following: