The University has joined the universities of Tartu in Estonia and Uppsala in Sweden as part of a new €1 million EU-funded research collaboration.
The project bid, entitled Building Research Excellence in Russian and East European Studies at the Universities of Tartu, Uppsala and Kent, was awarded the funding as part of the EU’s Horizon 2020 twinning scheme.
The three-year project – known as UPTAKE – aims to increase research excellence and to promote the international visibility and integration of the three universities in the field of Russian and East European Studies.
Professor Elena Korosteleva, Director (Professional Studies) of the Global Europe Centre at the School of Politics and International Relations is a Co-Investigator for the project.
She said UPTAKE would involve the launch of a new academic conference series, the organization of five international schools, extensive inter-institutional mobility, joint supervision of doctoral students and postdoctoral fellows, coordinated promotion of research outputs, joint conceptualization and launch of new collaborative research projects, as well as extensive dissemination and communication measures.
The proposal submitted by the three institutions earned the maximum number of points under the European Commission’s evaluation process. A total of 553 applications were submitted.