This internal Curriculum Development Workshop, conducted in a hybrid format with participants in Ukraine, Hungary, Poland, and Germany as well as on-site in Berlin, explores the different seminars and its plans and formats for the 2024 summer semester.
After the successful 2022-23 academic year, Central European University, in cooperation with Imre Kertész Kolleg, University of Jena, as well as other Ukrainian and global university partners, is continuing the INVISIBLE UNIVERSITY FOR UKRAINE (IUFU) certificate program (offering ECTS credits) for junior and senior undergraduate (BA) and graduate (MA and PhD) Ukrainian students, whose studies have been affected by the war. The name of this transnational solidarity program evokes the various nineteenth and twentieth-century underground and exile educational initiatives (such as the “flying universities”) in Eastern Europe, as well as the tradition of Invisible Colleges formed after 1989 in the region.
In 2023 IUFU offered 15 thematic courses co-taught by 22 course directors, 190 lecturers, and 70 mentors. 420 students were involved in the course work, 144 full and partial research scholarships were distributed, and 49 students participated in the summer school in Lviv and Budapest.
The program offers an intensive learning experience on the role of Ukraine in changing European and global contexts, placing questions relevant for Ukrainian students into a transnational comparative perspective. The program is not meant to replace or duplicate the existing education opportunities in Ukrainian universities, but to support them by filling the lacunae that temporarily emerged due to the Russian invasion. By strengthening the ties of Ukrainian educational institutions, as well as scholars and students, to transnational networks, we hope to counter the destructive effects of brain drain through creating access to educational infrastructure and academic knowledge for students irrespective of their current location. The program is designed in a hybrid format (online teaching with a possibility of shorter on-site visit to Budapest in the form of a winter and summer schools).
The two-day curriculum development workshop in Berlin brings together coordinators and scholars involved in the six courses that are planned for the Spring semester of 2023/2024 academic year to flesh out the syllabi in detail and to exchange experience from the previous semesters of the IUFU. The program will also include an evening discussion, “Transnational academia in transnational conflicts”, where seminar participants will discuss with colleagues of various academic backgrounds how academic solidarity functions during the war on transnational level, how different conflict zones are interrelated with the key global issues in and what is the impact of the war on the area studies and on the global academia.
IUFU is supported by the Open Society University Network, with co-funding from the Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), as well as the Porticus Foundation, the Institute of International Education (US), XTX Markets (UK), and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
This two-day workshop is co-organized by Prisma Ukraïna, IUFU, and the Imre Kertész Kolleg Jena.
For more information on the program, please visit the CEU website.
Kindly note that this event is a non-public internal event.