Eureast Platform broadens view on Eastern Europe and Eurasia
(18-10-2022) A more extensive scope ensures the change that the Eureast Platform also expresses in its name: the view on Eastern Europe and Eurasia.
Russia's war against Ukraine has prompted Ghent University to open the country-oriented view of the Russia Platform to a more inclusive view of the wider region. Eastern Europe and Eurasia are now overseen by the Eureast Platform.
The Eureast Platform facilitates and advises on academic collaboration with and study of the countries of Eastern Europe and Eurasia, more specifically Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan.
This broadening fits within a larger reflection exercise that is on-going at Ghent University to broaden the view of the world with the regional platforms on a wider region.
Objectives
Since their independence from the Soviet Union in the early 1990s, all the countries taken into account have followed distinct paths, marked by diverging forms of political and economic development and reflecting their wide cultural, societal and geographical diversity. Eastern Europe and Eurasia have substantial geopolitical, geo-economic and cultural relevance for the European Union, which has developed highly interdependently with these two larger areas.
The ambition of Ghent University’s Eureast Platform is to coordinate, facilitate and stimulate cooperation with Eastern Europe and Eurasia regarding education, research and service to society, as well as to advance knowledge about the above-mentioned regions and countries.
The Eureast Platform pursues three main objectives:
- To develop research collaborations and to promote exchange of students, researchers and lecturers;
- To foster study of and research on the region and to serve as an umbrella for several knowledge centres on Eastern Europe and Eurasia advancing academic and societal knowledge about these countries.
- To match and valorise academic expertise on Eastern Europe and Eurasia with external local and international partners.
Call for Knowledge Centres
At the moment, the Eureast Platform hosts one knowledge centre, namely CERISE, focusing on Russia. The Eureast Platform launches a call for maximum three additional knowledge centres that will reside under the framework of the Eureast Platform. The aim of the centres is to advance the knowledge on a specific region or set of countries within the framework of the Eureast Platform by bringing together scholars interested in the field, and promoting that knowledge of the region or set of countries to the academics and the broader community.