International school “Prospects of European integration: comparison with the regional integration processes in the Northern Europe”

From 13 to 17 March Petrozavodsk State University hosted international school “Prospects of European integration: comparison with the regional integration processes in the Northern Europe”

The school was organized within the framework of the “EU Centre in the Barents region of Russia” project, implemented with the financial support  of the Erasmus+ programme of the European Union.

More than 30 people from Petrozavodsk, Rostov-on-Don, Perm, Ekaterinburg, Kazan, Kazakhstan, Finland, Denmark, Spain, Germany and Italy took part in the school. School lecturers – DSc, professor, Head of Department of Political Sciences of Perm State University Liubov Fadeeva, lecturer at the department of foreign studies of the Institute of social and political sciences, deputy head of the EU information centre at Ural Federal University Aleksei Chudinov, Candidate of Sciences, research fellow of the Institute of Economics of the Karelian Research Centre of Russian Academy of Sciences Ekaterina Shlapeko, professor, Head of the Centre for the Study of political change, director of the PhD programme in Political science, European politics and international relation of the University of Siena (Italy) Maurizio Cotta, research fellow at Barcelona Centre for International Affairs Nicolas de Pedro, head of the PetrSU Department of history, political science and international relations, head of the research center of the WWII problems on the European North, chairman of Karelian Department of the European Studies association Yury Kilin, Candidate of Sciences, assistant professor at the department of History, Political Science and International Relations Ilya Solomesch, and senior lecturer of this department Anton Lapshin.

School programme included two main forms of work: lectures and discussion in work groups. Within groups students and lecturers discussed questions that involved a topic of the day and were of special interest to the participants. Such mode of work allowed to consider important questions from different approaches and freely exchange opinions. During the week students of the Institute of History, Political and Social Sciences and the Institute of Foreign Languages of PetrSU, as well as South Federal University, Perm State National Research University, Kazan Federal University, University of Helsinki and Copenhagen were listening to lectures on topics such as ecology as an integration factor in EU and Barents Euro-Arctic Region, European identity, regional organizations in Northern Europe and EU policy in the region, current situation in the EU etc.

Students’ polling with evaluative forms showed that participants have positively evaluated the school’s organization, content and format. They pointed out that the school was of practical importance for them, and this week has been useful for their future studies and professional activity.

The participation of Nicolas de Pedro was provided by the project of the European Union “Public Diplomacy. EU and Russia”.