Bridging Policy, Theory and Practice

Global Challenges Fellowship Closing workshop

The workshop is open to all but please register by completing this form until Monday, April 9, 2018.

The aim of the Global Challenges Fellowship Program (GCFP) was to invite researchers and practitioners from emerging countries to the School of Public Policy (SPP) and the Institute for Advanced Study (IAS CEU) at Central European University in Budapest and the Global Public Policy Institute (GPPi) in Berlin to forge closer ties between Western and non-Western researchers and policy makers so as to offer fresh perspectives on some of the world’s most pressing public policy challenges, which can only be resolved together. Over its three years the program has hosted several fellows, fostered new forms of collaboration and enabled new research. The program was implemented with the generous support of the Volkswagen Foundation.

In light of these goals, the project closing workshop will rejoin participants to report on GCF fellows’ achievements and discuss the complexities and synergies of policy driven versus pure academic research as reflected by the work of the GCF fellows and perspectives of the hosts. It will also bring together fellows and project partners to evaluate and exchange ideas about the benefits of the chosen institutional scheme/format of the project, the possibilities it provides as well as its limitations. Contributors will include current IAS fellows whose work is relevant to the project goals.

Thursday, April 12

13.00 Registration

13:30 – 13:45   Welcome remarks by Professor Martin Kahanec, Acting Head, School of Public Policy, CEU and Professor Nadia Al-Bagdadi, Director, Institute for Advanced Study, CEU

13:45 – 14:00   The GCF project – an overview by Professor Wolfgang Reinicke, School of Public Policy, CEU

In two panels current and former GCF fellows will present the research project they started during their fellowship with a view to the impact the time spent with CEU had on the very content, research design and methods used in their research work as well as the broader connections within the domains of Security and Development.

14:00 – 15:30   Panel 1: Security

Panel chair: Dr. Daniel Mekonnen, Eritrean Law Society, Geneva, Senior Fellow at IAS CEU

GCF Fellows:

Indigenous Rights in Mineral Rich Areas: A Case Study of Niyamgiri in Odisha State of India - Medha Chaturvedi, Senior Fellow, Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs

Geopolitics of Regionalism: Moving towards Regional Integration as a Means for Lasting Peace and Stability in the Middle East - Mohammad Hassan Khani, Faculty Member & Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations, Imam Sadiq University Teheran

State Transformation and the Politics of Rescaling: Southeast Asia’s Response toward China’s Financing in Infrastructure Projects - Moch Faisal Karim, Lecturer, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta

15:30 – 15:45 Coffee break

15:45 – 17:30 Panel 2: Development  

Panel chair: Andre Thiemann, Bielefeld University, Junior Fellow IAS CEU

GCF Fellows:

Migrant Children in Urban China: Acculturation and School AdaptationYu Song, Associate Professor, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China

Institutional Portfolios and the Dynamics of Locational Switching of Foreign Direct Investment John Luiz, Professor of Management, University of Sussex

Language of Indigenous Resistance in India: Analyzing Forms of Contestation to Governmentality, Globalization and Culture - Dattatary Bhandalkar, PhD Scholar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai:

The Growing Tension between Africa and the International Criminal Court (ICC): Implications for Global Cooperation in the Fight against Atrocity Crimes - Daniel Mekkonen (Eritrean Law Society, Senior Fellows at IAS CEU)

Friday, April 13

9:30 – 11:00 Panel discussion and round table 1

Global North/Global South: academic intersections and policy perspectives  

The Global Challenges Fellowship was initiated for a better academic exploration of the workings of multilateralism in an increasingly “post-Western” world. For European scholars and policymakers alike, there is an urgent need to better understand the traditions, motivations, and worldviews of non-Western powers. Conversely, non-Western scholars are often not sufficiently familiar with the diverse set of influences on Europe’s multilateral policies. In other words: there is a need for mutual learning and exchange. One way of achieving this is for European scholars to forge closer ties with researchers from non-Western countries. This is a necessary precondition for “a more universal discipline of IR that incorporates the ideas, voices and experiences of the world beyond the West” (Achaya 2011, 636). To this purpose, he Global Challenges Fellowship brought public policy researchers from emerging economies and rising powers outside the “established West” to SPP and CEU IAS as well as to GPPi.

Panel chair: Daniel Large, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy, CEU

Discussants: 

Daniel Large, Assistant Professor, School of Public Policy, CEU

Medha Chaturvedi, Senior Fellow, Ministry of Overseas Indian Affairs

John Luiz, Professor of Management, University of Sussex

Moch Faisal Karim, Lecturer, Bina Nusantara University, Jakarta

Yu Song, (Associate Professor, Xi’an Jiaotong-Liverpool University, China

11.00 – 11-15 Coffee Break

11:15 – 12:30 Panel discussion and round table 2

 Public policy and academic research

On the one hand, in some policy areas and contexts, there is currently more direct collaboration between research and practice than ever before. On the other hand, science and policy expertise are increasingly facing political criticism and public distrust. The GCF fellowship aimed to target primarily scholars who work at the intersection between academia and the policy world. This round table will explore various points of view regarding the obstacles and opportunities scholars have to impact real policy change and to impact scholarly discourses.

Panel chair:  Professor Wolfgang Reinicke, School of Public Policy, CEU

Discussants:

Nadia Al-Bagdadi, Director IAS CEU

Dattatary Bhandalkar, PhD Scholar, Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai

Cristina Corduneanu-Huci, Assistant Professor SPP

Mohammad Hassan Khani, Faculty Member & Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations, Imam Sadiq University Teheran

Wolfgang Reinicke, Professor, SPP 

12:30 General Closing Comments