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About The Project

Objectives of the project:

Main objective: Eradication of prejudices, and hence decrease of the levels of mistrust through enhanced dialogue promoting rational information between the publics of Turkey (TR) and the EU;

Specific targets:
i) Dissemination of better knowledge and understanding of TR within the EU and of EU within TR;
ii) Provide for the exchange of knowledge on EU policies as well as enhance analytical skills and academic know-how on both sides;
iii) Contributing to the enhancement of civil society dialogue and research capacity between EU and TR through institutional cooperation between BİLGİ, Sc Po and IFEA;

These will mainly be achieved through long-term sustainable collaboration between a Turkish University (İstanbul Bilgi University) and a prevalent EU member state university (Sciences Po-Institut d’Etudes Politique de Paris), with support from IFEA (Institut Français d’Etudes Anatoliennes).

Project activities:

Scientific exchange of professors and doctoral/post-doctoral research fellows, expert task force of academicians, joint multidisciplinary research project, a permanent course to be taught at BİLGİ, two weekend schools, a summer school, three thematic/awareness raising conferences, one final evaluation conference.

Expected results:

Scientific interaction progressed in social sciences and history;
Networking activities enhanced both academic and civil society contacts and hence promote socialisation;
Dissemination of knowledge on institutions and policies of European Union, EU enlargement and effects of Turkey’s candidature to join the EU.

About the partners:

Sciences PO is a prestigous French higher education institution traditionally renowned for educating the French political and diplomatique elite. In the last couple of years, Science Po has initiated the establishment of ‘chairs’ (i.e. on sustainable development, the Middle East) to develop a new structure of teaching, research, documentation and publication for recognition of and research on contemporary issues, as a neutral space of debate and reflection. This is the general framework within which the ‘Turkish Chair’ was established, with the aim of bringing together and mobilising the intellectual resources on Turkish studies from other universities in France and in the rest of the EU to provide for scientific exchanges, the establishment of courses and research scholarships.
http://www.sciences-po.fr/portail/fr-fr/international/english2/

IFEA is a research institute within the network of the French Foreign Ministry institutions of research. It was formed in İstanbul in 1930, with the agenda of conducting research in history and archeology in Anatolia. Today, IFEA’s fields of research has evolved to include i) heritage and memory, ii) urban studies, iii) archeology, iv) History of Ottoman Empire and Turkey, and v) Caucasus. IFEA is an institution with extensive experience in following and supporting French universitities and institutes doing academic research on Turkey.
http://www.ifea-istanbul.net/; http://ovipot.blogspot.com/

Both institutes will be partners for the duration of the action and afterwards once the project attains sustainability. Sc Po will be involved in receiving/sending professors from/to BİLGİ for scientific exchanges; organising and hosting one meeting of the expert task force, one weekend school and one thematic/awareness raising conference; hosting one doctoral/post-doctoral research fellow from TR; co-leading the joint research project and providing professors from its academic cadre for the summer school at BİLGİ. IFEA will be involved in the organisation of the third thematic/awareness raising conference at IFEA; the teaching of the permanent course at BİLGİ; administering the translation of the existing ‘OVIPOT’ subsite on the IFEA website (also known as the ‘Observatory of Turkey’) into Turkish to make it a permanent feature of the BİLGİ website. In addition to these, both Sc Po and IFEA will be involved in announcing calls, project activities and outputs through their websites and mailing databases. Through the steering committee, both will also be involved in the scheduling of the rotating posts of the scientific exchange professors and selection of the members of the expert task force, doctoral/post-doctoral research fellows, participants and the speakers/lecturers of the weekend school and the summer school, speakers of the conferences.