Description
There is already a pressing challenge faced by the higher education globally posed by the need to answer to the needs of a knowledge society. As an emerging field, however, the European Studies face peculiar problems. The structural differences and divergent trends within the European integration, frequently described as a fracture along North-South, East-West or centre-periphery lines, creates a challenge to teaching and learning the European integration in diverse settings which are at different points of the integration process. The picture gets more complicated when it comes to teaching European Studies at ‘the periphery’ where the European integration is predominantly an ongoing process and a moving target and the European Studies faces the danger of being perceived as a derivation of how the country in question is doing with regard to the EU accession rather than an autonomous scientific discipline.
Departing from the claim that teaching and learning ‘Europe’ in its ‘periphery’ needs a critical and multi-faceted perspective which would unpack the notion of ‘Europe’ and the process of European integration as well as the educational and pedagogical dimensions of the European Studies, this panel intends to explore this puzzle of ‘periphery’ through two dimensions: First, it is necessary to take stock of the geographical and conceptual limits of ‘Europe’ and European Studies through contextualising ‘Europe’ as a region and European Studies as an academic discipline. How can we make sense of ‘Europe’ as a region and in terms of centre-periphery axis? How does European Studies resonate beyond the ‘centre’? Secondly, we also need to take a look at the practical and empirical hurdles of teaching and learning Europe beyond the immediate geography of the EU. Could we possibly uncouple practical hurdles of the EU integration process from academic research on ‘Europe’, especially in the ‘periphery’ where the above-mentioned hurdles are most intensely experienced?
