Author: Niels Hexspoor

Palacký Summer Law School: Human Rights Policy Legal Clinic

From 24 July to 4 August 2023, the Palacký University Faculty of Law organizes the Human Rights Policy Clinic within a 2-week-long Summer Law School. This Summer Law School will allow you to experience the Human Rights Policy Legal Clinic, which normally takes a whole semester, condensed in two weeks intensive schedule.

Program Description

A Legal clinic is a special form of legal education, combining theory and practice, designed to teach not only knowledge, but also develop skills and instill values, and promote social justice. Legal clinics exist in many forms. One of them is a Policy Legal Clinic, where students do not help individual clients, but rather focus on existing legal problem from a policy perspective, usually by analysis of legal regulation and its practical application, identifying problems and deficiencies, and suggesting general measures, such as changes to legal regulation or other policy-oriented activities, to address the problem.

The Summer Law School will allow the participants to develop:

  1. knowledge in the area of international, European and comparative human rights law (proportionality, horizontal effect, tension between universalism and particularism, equality, positive and negative obligations) and specific rights (human dignity, freedom of speech, socio-economic rights, environmental rights),
  2. develop wide range of analytical, creative, problem-solving, legal writing and critical thinking skills, increase their sensitivity to human rights issues in general, but specifically in cross-cultural context, and
  3. understand the importance of human rights monitoring, policing and advocacy.

During the two weeks of the Summer Law School, participants will engage in interactive sessions with human rights experts from various fields and backgrounds (attorneys, judges, human rights activists), developing their knowledge and relevant skills, which they will use over the course of the whole summer school when working in teams on analytical human rights policy projects, starting from defining and structuring the analyzed problem, researching and discussing it, presenting to others and writing and receiving feedback to their policy paper.

Students will be able to get enrolled in a formalized course at Palacký University, granting them ECTS credits.

Date and Location 

Dates of the academic program: 24 July to 4 August 2023

Venue: Palacký University in Olomouc, Faculty of Law – 17. listopadu 8, Olomouc, Czech Republic

Registration

Full fee: 490 EUR (includes academic program and catering during the academic program – 2 coffee breaks and lunch each day)

Aurora Alliance students can participate in the academic program free of charge. They may pay an optional fee of 180 EUR in order to be provided with catering during the academic program (2 coffee breaks and lunch each day). If not, there are numerous opportunities in walking distance from the summer school venue for coffee, snacks, and meals.

Participants are responsible for arranging their own travel and accommodation.

This summer school offers 16 places for Aurora Alliance students and 24 places for students from other universities.

Registration is done by email, contacting Radana Kuncova (radana.kuncova@upol.cz).

Contact

To register or for more information, please contact Radana Kuncova (radana.kuncova@upol.cz)

Summer Law School – Flyer

Summer School Remote Ethnography – a methodological tool-kit

This summer school is divided into two parts. The first part will take place online as a preparatory meeting on Friday 14 July 2023. The second will be held at Palacky University Olomouc 31 July – 4 August 2023.  It connects introductions to Open Source Research, remote sensing, interviewing, oral history, source criticism and decolonial theory.  

 

Description:

This summer school is intended to provide students and junior researchers with a basic toolkit in remote ethnography. It aims to enable a type of research in places of limited accessibility that can provide many of the same holistic, in-depth and detailed insights that classical ethnography does. Many of the teachers invited will be specialised in Xinjiang, China or Central Asia. Therefore, many texts and examples will concern this part of the world. Still, participation is not limited to students or researchers interested in these geographical locations and aims to provide a methodological toolkit that can be employed globally.

As an increasing number of areas in the world are becoming inaccessible or ethically untenable to do on-the-ground fieldwork, anthropologists and other researchers interested in these regions turn to remote methods. Online data and data gathering are at the center of this necessary refocus. Yet, many other types of data and material can be as important in coming to terms with realities on grounds inaccessible. This summer school presents some of these and methods of accessing them. Also, recent trends in remote research focus on isolated analyses of a disparate set of data, while the approach taught in this summer school encourages researchers to combine and triangulate these data types with each other, to let the data talk to each other. The idea of remote ethnography is that ethnography is a holistic endeavour that entails a degree of immersion and acquisition of general cultural knowledge and competencies. This means creating an analytically and methodologically sound conversation between government tenders, diaspora interviews, witness accounts, satellite images, leaked speeches, popular culture productions, propaganda and lists of detained people while embedding all of this in the long-term cultural knowledge of the region and its history, political economy, narratives, logics and languages. 

The summer school  draws on previous remote research traditions, such as those established during WW2 and the Cold War, for inspiration and to craft an epistemological framework for analysing very different data. At the same time, it seeks to critically reflect on the role of the researcher and her potential contribution to colonial-type knowledge production. Critically debating the dangers of abuse for counter-insurgency and exploitation of the weak that our research may help open up are crucial parts of a developing ethics code which the workshop seeks to introduce and discuss.

 

In-person and Online:

The summer school is divided into two parts. The first part will take place online as a preparatory meeting on Friday 14 July 2023. The second will be held at Palacky University Olomouc 31 July – 4 August 2023

The online part will be a full day preparatory meeting including three two-hour sessions. The first session consists of a short round of introductions and short introductions into Remote Ethnography as a concept, the summer school and the methods taught in it. the second session entails somewhat more elaborate informal presentations of each participant’s work, material and interest going forward as well as some of the Remote Ethnographic work already being done or in planning by some of the convenors. The third session is devoted to preparatory readings for the workshop. The students receive a list and a number of PdF texts to prepare for the in-person summer school two weeks later.

The in-person part will cover five days. Each day has a dedicated focus-topic and one person from the organising team in charge. At the end of the summer school each student leaves with the design of a small remote ethnography related research study that they will pursue in the following two months.

 

Topics of focus:

The in-person part is divided into the following topics with (persons in charge; and suggested invited speakers) added in parentheses. 

0) Introduction and overview, history of remote research and sources to draw from (Rune Steenberg; Robbie Barnett, …)

1) Online ethnography, discourse analysis, video analysis… (David O’Brien; Hanna Burdorf, Gene Bunin, Hacer Gonul, Vanessa Frangville, …)

2) Interview techniques and oral history (Muqeddes Mijit; Rian Thum, …)

3) Remote sensing for dummies – satellite imagery, Google Map/Google Earth/Open Street Map, etc. (Martin Lavicka; Robbie Barnett, Björn Alpermann, Nathan Ruser, …)

4) Source criticism, fact checking, triangulation & decolonial theory (Vanessa Frangville; Philipp Lottholz, Deniz Yonucu, Madina Tlostanova…)

5) Bringing it all together in an holistic Remote Ethnography – and your own data and research (Rune Steenberg; …)

Topics 0) and 5) will not cover full days, nor probably will 3) and 4). 1) may span over more than one day.

The in-person part will be held hybrid with online participants allowed to join via BBB.

Enrolling:

Interested? Please contact Martin Lavicka (martin.lavicka@upol.cz) by the end of May. 

Recording:

For those who present full lectures at the workshop, we plan to record them and to put them up online as Youtube and Podcast episodes.

Call for Nominations – Aurora Fellowship at UDE

If you are interested in deepening your cooperation with your partners the University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany, sign up now for the Aurora Fellowship at UDE!

The Aurora Fellowship is a two-week programme that we were able to establish with the support of the Förderverein der Universität Duisburg-Essen (the University of Duisburg-Essen’s sponsorship association).

The aim of this programme is to invite internationally renowned researchers working within the Aurora European Universities Alliance to UDE, allowing them to engage in intensive exchange with our University’s researchers, doctoral candidates, postdocs and students. For UDE, it is particularly important to involve local communities and the wider region, which is why the Aurora fellow is to give a public lecture for interested members of the public.

The thematic focus of the fellowship is centred on the four pilot domains that UDE is committed to as a university together with the Aurora network:

▪ Sustainability and climate change
▪ Digital society and global citizenship
▪ Health and well-being
▪ Culture, diversity & identity

The focus is on a different one of the four pilot domains each semester. This was started off with ‘Culture, diversity & identity’ in the winter semester 2022/23. In the summer semester 2023, the focus will be on sustainability and climate change.

The programme: As part of this programme, the University of Duisburg-Essen invites nominations once per semester for a two-week Aurora Fellowship to the amount of €5000. All UDE members are eligible to submit nominations. Researchers from the nine associated Aurora universities can be nominated. Alongside accommodation and the reimbursement of travel expenses, candidates can receive prize money of €2500.

The Aurora Fellowship helps develop skills that enable active participation in shaping contemporary social, political, environmental, economic or healthcare change. A public lecture will also present and explain exciting findings from the most recent research on major contemporary challenges in a comprehensible way to interested members of the public. 

Candidates must be nominated by members of UDE, thus interested academics should get in touch with their contacts in Duisburg-Essen.

Announcement Aurora Fellowship – Pdf.

Aurora Summer School at UDE – The Enkelfähig Economy: Sustainable Transformation of Business Models

Our partners at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany are organizing a Summer School on the The Enkelfähig Economy: Sustainable Transformation of Business Models. This summer school will take place between 19.06.2023 and 07.07.2023.

The summer school looks at the ways companies can be made more sustainable, by looking at the following factors: 

  • Impact Measurement
  • Business Model Analysis
  • Business Model Optimization

For more detailed info, take a look at these files: 

Flyer – The Enkelfähig Economy: Sustainable Transformation of Business Models 

Description of The Enkelfähig Economy Summer School

To apply, send an email aurora-register@uni-due.de with the following info:

  • Full Name
  • Date of Birth
  • Place of Birth
  • Email Address
  • Proof of Study at UP

Registration will be open until 15.04.2023. This course is open to all master’s students, and you can earn 5 ECTS upon completion.

You are eligible to receive funding for your participation in this summer school, covering your travel and accommodation. More information on the funding opportunities is found here. 

 

Presenting Aurora’s Capacity Development and Eastern Partnership at ACAs “What’s New in Brussels”. 

On the 2nd and 3rd of February, Selma Porobic was invited to ACA’s (Academic Cooperation Association) seminar “What’s new in Brussels? – Recent Developments in European Policies and Programmes”  to share Aurora’s pioneering work on Eastern Partnerships exemplified by its Capacity Development Support (CDS) programme with special focus on its institutional support to the V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University in Ukraine.  

In her session, “Working with Global Regions – Eastern Partnership“, Selma Porobic shared the results and best practices of Aurora’s unique CDS programme in Central & Eastern Europe, and how it was transformed into a tailor-made support scheme to address the needs of the war-affected Aurora associate partner, V.N. Karazin Kharkiv National University. These activities set Aurora apart from other European University Alliances.  Since  March 2022, as Ukraine Support Coordinator in Aurora, and in a close collaboration with Karazin’s leadership, she has been fully managing the emergency response as well as designing and implementing the long-term, systemic and institutional support for this partner university in Ukraine, which include fundraising, relocating displaced academics and staff, and joint online education on peacebuilding. More detailed information can be found here.   

In this panel, Selma also introduced the continuation of this engagement in the next phase of the Aurora Alliance’s programme as part of the work package Capacity Building and Community Engagement. During the next four years, another fully dedicated task team, Karazin University Peace Education Hub, led by Palacký University Olomouc, plans to work towards further strengthening of the Karazin University’s capacity for education and training in conflict transformation, and peace building within the wider Kharkiv region.

After two consecutive years online due to COVID, ACAs flagship seminar “What’s new in Brussels?” was this year organized in-person in Brussels, providing a full overview of the latest developments in the European Higher Education Area, with a global perspective.  

The 2023 agenda offered a wide range of high-level panels and gathered various policy advisors, membership associations and European Commission representatives, such as Vanessa Debiais-Sainton, Head of the Higher Education Unit  at the  Directorate-General for Education, Youth, Sports and Culture. The sessions addressed the latest trends in the European higher education and research and innovation including the European University Initiative’s policy developments and long-term funding, as well as other areas of European University Strategy like Diversity and Inclusion. Different approaches, opportunities and programmes for global partnerships were also introduced focusing regional collaborations within the Eastern Partnership, Western Balkans, Sub-Saharan Africa & South Mediterranean.

Creative Writing Workshop in Olomouc

This creative writing workshop builds on the world-renowned expertise of the University of East Anglia’s Creative Writing Department that launched the careers of many celebrated authors such as Kazuo Ishiguro. Hosted by the Department of English and American Studies of Palacký University Olomouc, the workshop will give you the opportunity to develop your creative writing skills in the charming baroque city of Olomouc.

This five-day creative writing residency, organized between 22 and 26 May, 2023, is open to interested applicants from all Aurora Universities.The program will focus on developing your creative writing skills in English through a series of workshops and collaborative excercises together with other students from across Europe. In the evening, a social program will be organized, and on Friday the 26th you will have the opportunity to participate in the Aurora Student Conference in Olomouc, where you can meet even more students from Aurora Universities. A more detailed program will be announced soon  

Applying is simple! If you are interested to participate, send an email to Niels Hexspoor (niels.hexspoor@upol.cz) . 4 ECTS credits can be earned upon successful completion of the program. The deadline for registration is March 19, 2023! 

Funding opportunities might be available for you! For more information contact your local Aurora office.

If you have any questions about the Creative Writing Workshop, or how to reach your local Aurora contact person, please contact Niels Hexspoor (niels.hexspoor@upol.cz) 

CALL – Aurora Staff Mobilities

It is our pleasure to announce our ongoing call for UP Aurora Staff Mobility, which will allow selected applicants a short staff mobility to any Aurora University (except associate partners). 

Due to the nearing end of the first funding cycle, all staff mobility travels need to be finished by 6/10/2023 so reimbursement and accounting procedures are finished until the end of October.

This scheme is open for all UP employees and can be used for a variety of different purposes, such as teaching, research, training or job shadowing. Due to popular demand, we can now also offer you the opportunity to cover your travel and accommodation for if you participate in a conference (not including conference fees), if combined with a visit to the relevant department to plan further cooperation. 

This call will be open on an ongoing basis, with applications being evaluated by the Aurora Staff Mobility Evaluation Committee (ASMEC) every first Monday of the month. The results of the evaluation will be communicated to the applicants within the same week.

Please keep in mind to submit your application at least two months before the start of your planned mobility.

N.B.:The ASMEC will not convene in the month of August and December, meaning that applications filed in July will be assessed September. Due to the nearing end of the first funding cycle, all staff mobility travels need to be finished by 6 October 2023. For more information on the conditions, selection criteria and the application sheet, please to a look at the documents below. 

If you wish to apply, or have any questions please contact Markéta Šemberová.

 

The application form can be found here:

Aurora Mobility Application Form

Additional documents can be found here: 

Aurora Staff Mobility Scheme – Terms 2023 – Final

 

Virtual Lecture Series and Early Career Networking Hour

The Societal Challenges Lecture Series is aimed at early career researchers with a two-fold objective: delivering cutting-edge academic analysis on the diverse problems of our times, and providing international networking opportunities for doctoral researchers and postdocs. The lecture series aims at providing an antidote to impulsive disaster talk through perceptive academic analysis.

Outstanding researchers within the Aurora European University Alliance will give engaging online lectures during the academic year 2023 within two of the Aurora priority domains:

  • Digital Society & Global Citizenship
  • Health & Wellbeing

Delivered online via Zoom, each event begins with a 30-45 minute lecture by an outstanding researcher. You can register for individual dates or the entire series. Following the talk, you will have the opportunity to discuss the lecture, formulate questions for the speaker, and network in breakout rooms for 20 minutes. Finally, the audience and speaker reconvene for a well-prepared, stimulating Q&A.

Take the opportunity to meet your peers as well as renowned researchers from the Aurora partner universities. Expand your network and maybe even start new collaborations in your research area!
Participation will be certified upon request.

Find out more information about the program and registration here.

Full Guest Lecture Program 

January 2023:

24 January 2023, 14:00–15:30 CET – Science Fundamentalism

25 January 2023, 14:00–15:30 CET – Immuno-psychiatry: towards precision medicine

February 2023:

01 February 2023, 14:00–15:30 CET – Diet in the primary prevention of cardiovascular diseases: PREDIMED STUDIES

09 February 2023, 14:00–15:30 CET – To feed or not to feed – How tumor cells adapt to their nutrient environment

March 2023

07 March 2023 14:00–15:30 CET – Complex systems approaches to social sciences illustrated with an analysis of judicial decisions

09 March 2023, 14:00–15:30 CET – Mendelian disorders of the Epigenetic Machinery: discovery to possible treatments

23 March 2023, 14:00–15:30 CET – Preparing the Next Generation to Fulfil SDGs: Teaching for Social Innovation

30 March 2023, 14:00–15:30 CET – Illegal content on digital platforms – a legal perspective

April 2023

13 April 2023, 14:00–15:30 CET – Ecosystem Health: From single cells to solar system scale

27 April 2023, 14:00–15:30 CET – Cloud Culture: Cinema, Digital Modernity and the Archive

 

Aurora representatives met in Amsterdam to discuss perspectives on collaboration

At the close of 2022, members of the European university alliance Aurora, of which Palacký University is a member, discussed further possibilities and prospects for cooperation in higher education. The two-day meeting was hosted by Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Palacký University was represented at the meeting by Rector Martin Procházka and Selma Porobić, Aurora’s institutional coordinator for UP.

The agenda of the meeting in the Netherlands included several meetings and discussions of representatives of the individual universities and alliance organs. Among other things, the General Council of Rectors discussed the possibilities of further funding of the Alliance and agreed on a proposal to be sent to the European Commission in January as part of the European Universities Call. If accepted, it should ensure the active participation of Palacký University and its partners in the ambitious European university alliances project in the years to come. “I believe that the European Commission will approve the submitted proposal, and thus we will be able to continue the existing cooperation as well as further develop these relationships so that our schools, and especially our students, can benefit from them,” said UP Rector Procházka.

UP Rector added that the active role of Palacký University, which joined Aurora in 2020, was acknowledged and resulted in success in the past year. At the spring meeting of universities in Innsbruck, Palacký University transformed its existing associate membership into full-fledged status and became a member of the global university consortium Aurora Network. This gives UP the opportunity to participate in decision-making and closer collaboration within this university network. The Aurora Network focuses on fulfilling Aurora’s global mission, which extends beyond the borders of Europe and the initiatives of European universities. It is primarily concerned with international aid and cooperation with non-European partners, especially in education and research. (You can find more details about this here.)

The possibilities of connecting the Aurora Network with the EU-funded Aurora Alliance and its application were then discussed separately by the Board of Rectors, Aurora’s top decision-making body, which consists of four selected rectors, including UP’s. “We have agreed that the Aurora Network has great added value as a platform for further cooperation between our universities in research and its evaluation, as well as for global outreach beyond the EU,” added Procházka.    

Text: Ivana Pustějovská

Aurora Student Mobilities

Do you want to go for a Summer School in Copenhagen, take a short intensive course in Napoli, or go to any other event at an Aurora University on a short exchange?

We are please to announced that we have opened the Aurora Student Mobility Call, to fund your participation in any Aurora activities. We are constantly updating our offer of opportunities, so check out our website for regularly for the lastest news.  

The Aurora Mobility scheme will allow UP students to travel and take part in activities within the framework of Aurora. Students applying for an Aurora mobility must be enrolled at UP, in a study program at the Bachelor’s, Master’s, or Doctoral Level. If your proposed mobility concerns ECTS-credits, please make sure to check in advance with your department and faculty whether they will recognize the credits for the proposed activity. This funding is especially for those opportunities that would be difficult to fund through the regular Erasmus Procedure. Make sure to check if you are elligible for Erasmus Funding by looking here

The proposed short term mobility must comply with the eligibility rules regarding duration, maximum costs and reporting requirments described in the Aurora UP Student Mobility Scheme document. All mobilities must take place at an Aurora University, or be organized in the framework of the Aurora Alliance and the European Commission’s European Universities Initiative.

Applications must be filed at least 8 weeks before the intended starting date. The grant can only cover travel and accommodation expenses.

If you have any questions, or are interested in applying, pleas contact: Marek Sekanina.