Deusto:
The Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities and the Institute of European Studies are made up of internationally experienced instructors and researchers from various departments of the University of Deusto. They have international experience and provide the students with multilingual and interdisciplinary knowledge on various fields regarding Europe and international relations.
The Euroculture programme at the University of Deusto gives special emphasis to Latin American relations with Europe, as Spain holds close cultural and political contacts with the region. Debate seminars at Deusto deal with concepts such as Human rights and immigration are central focuses and form a distinctive aspect at Deusto with regard to Euroculture.
The University of Deusto has strong expertise on topics related to Central and South America. The specific objectives of the Europe in the wider World module offered at Deusto University are:
- To understand EU foreign policy.
- To understand the implications of EU’s international role for the wider world.
- To analyze critically EU foreign policy towards Latin America
- To be able to do critical analysis and evaluation of the EU’s foreign policy in Latin America.
- Thematic challenges of the strategic partnership
- EU–LAC summits
- Specialised dialogues: subregional and bilateral relations
Göttingen:
The Euroculture programme at the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen emphasizes the all-encompassing importance of culture in all spheres of human interaction.
Due to its long-standing special cooperation with e.g. the University of Pune, the relations between the Near East / India and Europe form a special focus during the second semester. The postcolonial situation provides the basis for reflecting upon and challenging what has been established in the first semester.
The other regional focus would be on North America and the mutual influences between the regions, which are analyzed in its political implications and cultural foundations. Concepts such as “Americanization” and “Globalization” are debated.
Special focus here as elsewhere lies on the investigation of “transcultural”, especially also with regard to migration flows to Europe as well as within Europe. Given the expertise of staff members in the field of Theology, the role of religions is analyzed especially in its relationship between Christians and Muslims in the context of a continuing integration process within Europe and its neighbors. Experiences of second generation immigrants are being investigated with the help of generational theories. They also provide the link to collective memory and identity, which is one core theme of first semester coursework
Groningen:
The academic and research focus of the Euroculture programme at the University of Groningen centers on the notion of cultural identity and its relation to European integration in all its dimensions. Concepts such as “Europeanisation” and “Citizenship” are debated. Trans-Atlantic relations and Asia features prominently in Groningen too.
In the second semester Euroculture in Groningen offers two research seminars: one focuses on a comparison of integration processes between Europe and Asia (“Changing power configurations in the 21ste century: Integration processes in East Asia and in Europe”), the other, taking cultural analysis as point of view, on representations and constructions of European identity in a globalized context (“ ‘Fortress Europe’: a prison house of representation?”).
The thesis topics are not limited to these geographical areas though, nor to a particular perspective. Thesis topics cover a wide geographical area and a large variety of dimensions, as the topics are closely related to the interest and expertise of the students (European culture, history, politics, foreign relations, literature, arts, European law, religion, sociology). Necessarily, every thesis has an interdisciplinary character. Since the start of the exchange programme with the four Euroculture partner institutions outside Europe, it has become clearly noticeable that this experience has an important bearing on the choice of the thesis topics.
Krakow:
The faculty at the Centre for European Studies is made up of internationally experienced instructors from various departments of the Jagiellonian University as well as visiting professors from other Polish universities and universities abroad. Three of them are full professors with rich international experience. Their goal is to provide graduate students with interdisciplinary knowledge, expertise and experience in European affairs, from the points of view both of the European institutions and Central and Eastern Europe societies. One of the research seminars focuses on the history, experiences and culture of Poland and its neighbours in Central Europe and to the East, in the countries of the former Soviet Union and its satellites. The second one focuses on the concept of identity, processes of social and cultural construction of identity on different levels, cultural diversity and pluralism, construction of civil society on local, regional, national and European level.
Olomouc:
The Euroculture programme at Palacký University has got the following focus points. The main geographic interest of the programme is Central Europe as a region with various cultural, political, social and other consequences in both present-day situation as well as historical context, always in reference to Europe as a whole. Specialists are also involved, who lecture and supervise theses related to Asian studies. From the thematic point of view the main interest lies in the visual culture of Europe and cultural heritage, cultural history and cultural identity of Europe, since the programme is based in the Department of History. However, scholars are available for consultations and supervising, who specialise in political science and other social sciences.
Strasbourg:
Due to its location and the presence of all major institutions of European integration, the focus of Strasbourg university research in the Euroculture framework is placed on European cultural history and French-German border cooperation. Thematic topics such as cultural identity, political identity, regional policies, social studies, transborder cooperation are addressed in an interdisciplinary research group set up in 2008 focussing on “European cultural contacts”, integrated in the global framework of the research network Lilpa (Littératures, Langues, Paroles), which has received official recognition by the Ministère de l’Education under the denomination “EA 1339”. Associating mainly academic staff of the two Masters Programmes “Euroculture” and “Plurilinguisme européen et contacts de culture”, its discussions are held in both English and French. Meetings are open to students which are invited to present their master thesis, focussing on methodological issues.
Udine:
The University of Udine was one of the founding partners of the Euroculture Master programme in 1999. Pooling together the expertises of academics from various Faculties (Modern Languages, Humanities, Economics and Law), the programme is naturally inclined to an interdisciplinary approach of teaching and research in the field of European cultural and political studies.
Due to its position at the crossroads of the Latin, Germanic and Slavic cultures and to the history of its territory, the programme in Udine has a regional focus on Central and Eastern Europe, the Balkans and the Mediterranean, while a strong attention is devoted to the issues of cultural identity, EU enlargement, regional policies and cross-border cooperation.
Uppsala:
The Baltic Sea Region (BSR): Common and diverging heritages is a Euroculture Research Seminar. The aim is to make master students familiar with important research topics related to the Baltic Sea Region. This includes selected topics related to the environment, history, culture, economy, security and politics of the region. In particular we focus on aspects of the welfare state, gender politics, minority issues, migration, security regimes, communication patterns and life-styles.