EXACT Net­work Sem­i­nar on Aca­d­e­m­ic Skills

The two-week “EXACT Net­work Sem­i­nar on Aca­d­e­m­ic Re­search Skills and High­er Ed­u­ca­tion Qual­i­fi­ca­tions” took place in the frame­work of the Marie Curie Ini­tial Train­ing Net­work “EXACT – EU Ex­ter­nal Ac­tion” from 15th and 28th Sep­tem­ber 2012 in Cologne. It was or­ga­nized by the EX­ACT-Team of the Jean-Mon­net-Chair, Prof. Wes­sels, De­part­ment of Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence and di­rect­ed by Dr. Ge­of­frey Ed­wards (EXACT Vis­it­ing Sci­en­tist, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge) and Dr. Robert Kis­sack (EXACT Vis­it­ing Sci­en­tist, In­sti­tut Barcelona d` Es­tud­is In­ter­na­cionals). Par­tic­i­pants in­clud­ed the twelve EXACT Re­search Fel­lows and eight ex­ter­nal guest re­searchers. The con­tent of the Net­work Sem­i­nar aimed at im­prov­ing aca­d­e­m­ic, teach­ing and re­search skills as well as pub­lish­ing and fund­ing op­tions and strate­gies. In a nut­shell it can be said, that the aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly out­stand­ing pro­gram com­bined with the ex­per­tise of the guest speak­ers re­flect­ed the spir­it of the EXACT Net­work as a sil­ver thread through­out the whole Sem­i­nar.

The par­tic­i­pants were gen­er­al­ly pleased with the pro­gramme of the sum­mer school as it in­clud­ed both in­ter­ac­tive and ex­pert-cen­tered el­e­ments. Par­tic­i­pants pre­sent­ed ei­ther one PhD chap­ter, a pub­li­ca­tion, an aca­d­e­m­ic or pol­i­cy paper. The ex­per­tise of the guest speak­ers gen­er­al­ly matched the top­ics of the par­tic­i­pants and thus pre­sent­ed great value added as these could get first-hand in­for­ma­tion and pre­cious ad­vice for their re­search pro­jects and PhD. Par­tic­i­pants high­ly ap­pre­ci­at­ed the in depth input they re­ceived from the or­ga­niz­ers on their re­spec­tive PhD top­ics. The ex­per­tise of the guest speak­ers and the op­por­tu­ni­ties of the EXACT Net­work com­bined al­lowed even to go be­yond aca­d­e­m­ic ex­pec­ta­tions. EXACT and non-EX­ACT fel­lows could build syn­er­gies and trans­pose prin­ci­ples from one pro­ject to an­oth­er.

A Pub­lic Round­table Dis­cus­sion on “EU Ex­ec­u­tive Pow­ers and Ex­ter­nal Ac­tion” was only one of the high­lights. Main dis­cus­sants were Gi­an­ni Bon­vici­ni, Is­ti­tu­to Af­fari In­ter­nazion­ali, Rome; Ge­of­frey Ed­wards, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge; Mar­lene Gottwald, EXACT Early Stage Re­searcher- Uni­ver­si­ty of Ed­in­burgh and Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne; Robert Kis­sack, In­sti­tut Barcelona d` Es­tud­is In­ter­na­cionals; Nicole Koenig, EXACT Early Stage Re­searcher of Uni­ver­si­ty of Ed­in­burgh and Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologe; John Pe­ter­son of Uni­ver­si­ty of Ed­in­burgh and Wolf­gang Wes­sels, Uni­ver­si­ty of Cologne. The main top­ics dis­cussed were the role of the EU in the Libya cri­sis and EU cri­sis man­age­ment as such, the Treaty of Lis­bon`s in­sti­tu­tion­al ar­chi­tec­ture and co­her­ence in EU ex­ter­nal ac­tion as well as the re­form of the Eu­ro­pean Se­cu­ri­ty Strat­e­gy and the set­ting-up of the Eu­ro­pean Ex­ter­nal Ac­tion Ser­vice.

The over­all im­pres­sion of the “EXACT Net­work Sem­i­nar on Aca­d­e­m­ic Skills” was ex­treme­ly pos­i­tive. The par­tic­i­pants sig­nif­i­cant­ly en­hanced their PhD skills and also got more fa­mil­iar with the for­mu­la­tion of re­search ques­tions, dif­fer­ent re­search meth­ods and teach­ing skills. Dr. Ge­of­frey Ed­wards and Dr. Robert Kis­sack man­aged very well to meet the ex­pec­ta­tions of re­searchers in the field of EU Ex­ter­nal Ac­tion. 

Fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on the con­tent are pro­vid­ed by the Pro­gramme.

 

 

©  EXACT - Marie Curie ITN on EU Ex­ter­nal Ac­tion
Tech­nis­che(r) Ansprech­part­ner(in):
Aline Barten­stein
Wulf Rein­ers
geändert: 31. Oc­to­ber 2012
er­stellt: 12. No­vem­ber 2010