Home » Jean Monnet Activities

Jean Monnet Activities

JM Chair

Jean Monnet Chair at the MGIMO European Studies Institute (ESI)

As a part of cooperation between the European Commission and the European Studies Institute at MGIMO University, the EU’s Education, Audiovisual and Culture Executive Agency has supported the project on Jean Monnet Chair at the ESI for 2015-2018 academic years. The official No of the Project: 565713-EPP-1-2015-1-RU-EPPJMO-CHAIR, the title of the project: Russia vs. the EU: the Post-Crimean European Security. The Chairholder is Prof. Dr. Oleg Barabanov, Deputy Director for Research at the ESI, Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

The main focus of the Project is to prepare a special course on dramatic changes in the sphere of European security after the Ukrainian/Crimean crisis of 2014. That crisis has posed a totally new agenda in the conflict resolution practice, provoked serious challenges for the stability of European security, and practically clashed Russia and the EU (and the EU Member States) with their opposite approaches to the crisis. The evolution of the crisis, the diplomatic efforts to settle it (via the Normandy and Minsk formates etc.), and its influence on the Russia-EU relations at the whole are also among the topics of the course.

The course is to be lectured to students of the Master Programme on EU Politics of the ESI as the prime target group of the Project. Then, on the base of their remarks, the course is to be updated and reelaborated for students of other Master Programmes of the ESI and MGIMO.

Another part of the Project is the methodology discussions and workshops with professionals and ESI stakeholders (alumni included), and presentation of its results at various international conferences both in Russia and in EU Member States. There is also a framework of coordination of activitites between the ESI Jean Monnet Chair and the ESI Jean Monnet Network.

JM Module

In 2015 under the MGIMO aegis and on the basis of the ESI Department of the Integration Processes the triennial Jean Monnet Module “Ethnopolitical Dynamics in the EU” was launched.  It was carried out according the “Erasmus+” project 565371-EPP-1-2015-1-RU-EPPJMO-MODULE. Module coordinator is Alexander Tevdoy-Bourmouli, Associate Professor of the Department of Integration Processes.

The module focuses on the development of multimodal learning complex dedicated to the intensive studying of the ethnopolitical dynamics in the EU region.  The main academic goal of the project is to establish ethnopolitical studies as a relevant and substantial part of the EU studies in MGIMO.

The core of the module is the course “Ethnopolitical dynamics in the EU” at Master level. The course includes such topics as basic theories of nation, nationalism, ethnopolitical interactions, the panoply of the ethnopolitical phenomena in the EU area, as well as EU approaches to the ethnopolitical conflict regulation. 

Another part of the project is the organization of the research seminars as a platform to involve students and young researchers into the deliberation of the European ethnopolitical reality alongside with the renowned scholars. The preparation of the textbook is the third essential part of the project. The textbook should accompany the teaching process providing students by the methodological and empirical thesaurus.

The project was successfully terminated in 2018 with the following outcomes:

I. The course "The Ethnopolitical Dynamics in the EU" (56 hours) was established in the frame of the MGIMO Master Program constituting its distinctive part during three academic years (2015/16, 2016/17, 2017/18). The structure of the course corresponds to three levels of the analysis: the examination  and the verification of the methodological approaches to the issues of nation and nationalism (1st block of the program) is followed by the examination of the ethnopolitical activity related with State-forming ethnicity (2nd block) and regional ethnic minority (3rd block). The learning process is focused on the core issues of the nowadays European ethnopolitical dynamics: right-wing populism, immigration boom and the challenge of the new diaspora integration, ethnoregionalism, ethnopolitical management in the EU region. The seminars as the basic form of the course performance are combined with round tables and brainstorming sessions allowing the students to participate more actively in the analysis of the issue discussed.

II. The series of the research seminars was organized in MGIMO as part of the Jean Monnet Module:

  1. "Adaptation of the European Residents of Immigration Descent: Political, Social, Cultural Aspects" (12.05.2016)
  2. “Non-government Organizations as Actors of the Ethnopolitical Management: European Experience” (23.11.2016)
  3. “Management of the Ethnopolitical Conflicts: European Experience for Russia and the World” (26.04.2017)
  4. “Fight against Discrimination in the EU and European Region: Institutional and Legal Aspects” (21.11.2017)
  5. “Right Populism in nowadays Europe: Triggers and Limits of the Success” (14.05.2018)

III. The textbook “Ethnopolitical Dynamics in the EU” was published in the “Aspect-Press” Publishing in 2018. (Тэвдой-Бурмули А.И. Этнополитическая динамика Европейского союза. Учебное пособие // А.И.Тэвдой-Бурмули. – М.: Аспект-Пресс, 2018. 224 с.).