Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS) Phase 2

Lead Research Organisation: University College London
Department Name: School of Slavonic & East European Studi

Abstract

This proposal seeks to build on the achievements of the Centre for East European Language-Based Area Studies (CEELBAS) in building UK capacity to understand and respond to developments in the strategically-important region of Central and Eastern Europe and Russia. The three development pathways outlined here are designed to enhance impact, particularly through interaction and engagement with non-academic communities, with a specific focus on the Humanities and Language elements of CEELBAS research and training (although the Centre will promote interdisciplinarity and will explore other funding sources to continue specifically social science-based activities). Phase 2 of CEELBAS offers a significant opportunity to underline and showcase the vital contributions made by Humanities and Language expertise in addressing major research and policy challenges in areas such as the changing global order, migration and mobility, security and stability, health and wellbeing, and inter-cultural relations. A major goal in the new phase of the project will be to clarify and promote the conceptual and practical (economic, political, social) impacts beyond academe that have been and will be generated by research in the fields of History and Culture.

Drawing on networks and partnerships established since 2006, and developing new ones, the first pathway aims to create sustainable knowledge exchange relationships with public, private and third-sector organisations through both collaborative events and, where feasible, internships and placements. Efforts will be made to demonstrate the mutual benefits of interaction and exchange between researchers and external partners. In order to achieve enhanced impacts, the project will disseminate the knowledge produced by leading edge research beyond academic institutions and environments, whilst giving researchers increased access to the knowledge, perspectives and feedback of user organisations. The second pathway centres on international research networks and exchanges, through which the numerous international contacts and partnerships at CEELBAS universities will be developed to enable UK and international researchers to collaborate and share expertise, including in areas of knowledge exchange and user engagement. This aims to raise the international profile and connectedness of UK research, helping to create a vibrant research environment in which different insights and approaches are shared and applied across borders. The third pathway aims to build capacity in research and language skills training networks for postgraduates. This includes training for knowledge exchange, public and media engagement, and interaction with non-academic audiences. Building on successful CEELBAS training initiatives developed since 2006, this pathway seeks to put in place the resources and infrastructure to deliver sustainable, cost-effective and innovative provision in advanced language and research skills.

The pathway activities aim to develop a template for best practice that will be applicable beyond the East European area studies research community (and its users), particularly, for example, in supporting future LBAS development for other regions, such as South Asia and Latin America. More broadly, CEELBAS aims to show innovation and leadership in promoting research excellence and knowledge exchange, and in providing training and career opportunities for postgraduate and early-career researchers. This will help to ensure that Humanities and language-based expertise at UK universities continues to play a central role in addressing issues of strategic national importance and in advancing international cooperation and intercultural communication and exchange.

Planned Impact

The three pathways are designed to enhance impact by providing business, public policy and third sector communities with new insights into the CEELBAS region and strategic themes, and with enhanced access to the expertise and language skills of academic researchers. Inter-regional perspectives and inter-Centre collaboration will be encouraged to demonstrate the wider strategic and national importance of Language-Based Area Studies in an inter-connected world.

Established CEELBAS Phase 1 contacts within user communities will be enhanced, particularly through increased international collaboration. The three development pathways aim to achieve extensive and lasting impacts by providing a sustainable framework for interaction between academics and a variety of non-academic users. Targeted user-groups will comprise business and consultancy firms (e.g. Control Risks, Chambers of Commerce, EBRD); charities and NGOs (e.g. BEARR Trust, Transparency International UK, Oxfam); policy institutes (e.g. Chatham House); media organisations (e.g. BBC World Service, Radio Free Europe, Russian Media House); museums, libraries and cultural organisations (e.g. British Library, British Council, Pushkin House, Polish Cultural Association); embassies and government departments (e.g. FCO).

Internship and placement schemes will promote the policy-relevance of CEELBAS research. Interns working on projects in BBC Monitoring, for example, would work with BBC staff to produce reports for BBC Monitoring customers, such as the FCO, MOD and other government departments. As a consequence, practitioners will benefit from the skills and conceptual understanding of CEELBAS researchers. Knowledge Exchange events will be designed in a practical manner to demonstrate to audiences drawn from business and/or policymaking communities the impacts that have been and can be generated by deep knowledge of the historical and cultural dynamics of the region. Such events will also demonstrate the added value of language expertise in addressing the various social, economic, political and strategic challenges, as well as the opportunities for more effective trade, business development and cultural exchange, that frame the UK's relationship with Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and Eurasia.

The strategic themes now prioritised by CEELBAS encompass areas such as transnationalism and cultural exchange, migration and diaspora studies, the political and social role of science, new media and non-textual modes of communication, the regional impact of global economic and political developments, and comparative studies of health and wellbeing. Such themes aim to demonstrate how the Humanities (including languages) fit into the interdisciplinary CEELBAS research agenda and how the project will promote collaboration between humanities-based scholars and social scientists. This will add significantly to the impact and strategic importance of CEELBAS.

The Knowledge Exchange initiatives to be pursued by CEELBAS in Phase 2 are intended to achieve impact both in the immediate term through workshops and project collaboration and in the longer term through training and development. The postgraduate training pathway, for example, will achieve non-academic impacts by orienting highly skilled young researchers to the needs of user communities. By embedding Knowledge Exchange in the training programme and developing capabilities in so-called 'strategically-important but vulnerable' languages, this pathway will help to ensure a sustainable flow of expertise for the academic and non-academic communities alike. CEELBAS language development projects (e.g. in creating corpora for strategic research) will be of interest to specialist language providers in government and other organisations and will help to address the national deficit in language skills in UK education and research by equipping postgraduates with vital transferable skills on an efficient, shared basis.
 
Description The award resulted in a range of achievements across the LBAS development funding pathways. The CEELBAS Internship Scheme has delivered impressive examples of collaboration between doctoral researchers and non-HEI partners, many interns were highly praised by the representatives of host organisations as their knowledge, professional skills and efficiency were valuable for the running of organisations (17 research internships outside the HE sector). CEELBAS kept providing an effective model for knowledge exchange (2 workshops to promote dialogue between academic researchers and experts from outside the HE sector, 1 workshop to promote the model of knowledge exchange). New research networks continue to emerge, connecting scholars across CEELBAS institutions, across LBAS Centres, and beyond (15 research network workshops). Recent International Research Visits (IRVs) have facilitated both the dissemination and/or refinement of ongoing research and set the basis for longer-term collaboration between CEELBAS universities and international ROs (10 international research visits). New initiatives with the FCO and the British Library, as well as impressive student-driven conferences and workshops, have enhanced the interdisciplinary research training environment at CEELBAS universities. Close liaison with the CEELBAS AHRC Centre for Doctoral Training ensured continued innovation and responsiveness to student training needs. CEELBAS has also been central to the development of new resources and expertise for e-learning in Slavonic and East European languages (6 new distance learning language courses, 21 research training bursaries, an online guide providing essential information for using over 30 archives and research libraries in Russia and Ukraine, 1 media training workshop, 3 study days at the British Library, 1 professional development training workshop).
Exploitation Route The projects, events and activities supported by CEELBAS through LBAS Development Funding will continue to bear fruit over the years ahead through planned research outputs and further collaborations. A recent example from LBAS Development Funding Phase 1 (2012-14) is a special issue of Science Fiction Film and Television (Issue 2, Vol. 8, June 2015) featuring outputs from the joint CEELBAS-CRCEES network workshop 'Far Rainbows: Russian and Soviet Science Fiction on Screen' (April 2013). In 2016, forthcoming special issues of the journals Soviet and Post-Soviet Politics and Society, Europe-Asia Studies and the Journal of Design History all have their origins in CEELBAS research network workshops; other outputs based on CEELBAS-supported events are also planned (e.g. on Russian Biography and Russian and Soviet Film Studies).

An example of the longer-term projects that have been initiated by CEELBAS research networking events is the ongoing collaboration between scholars at the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC) and international ROs, curators and museum directors. Following two CEELBAS-supported symposia on Russian-British artistic relations (December 2014 and January 2015), CCRAC has developed close ties with the Director of the Polenovo State Museum Reserve, as well as with experts at Yaroslavl University, with whom future joint conferences are being planned.

CEELBAS support for research networking events has also helped to promote interest in its subject area amongst undergraduate and postgraduate students.
Experience to date suggests that doctoral and early-career researchers will continue to benefit from new knowledge exchange opportunities developed through the CEELBAS internship scheme. For example, following an internship with the Project for Democratic Union (October 2014-February 2015), Vsevolod Samokhvalov (University of Cambridge) has participated in two colloquia in the Houses of Parliament and contributed to a collaborative report on EU foreign and security policy. Similarly, Natasha Wunsch (UCL) has written a policy study on the EU accession process in the Balkans for the German Council on Foreign Relations, in which she expands on insights gained through two CEELBAS internship projects with think-tanks in the region: https://dgap.org/en/think-tank/publications/dgapanalysis/right-goals-wrong-tools.

The CEELBAS AHRC CDT is already benefiting from the model for knowledge exchange that the Internship Scheme has developed. Indeed, one current CDT award holder - Daria Mattingly (University of Cambridge) - has already completed an internship supported under the LBAS Development Funding grant.

More broadly, CEELBAS internships and the Centre's other postgraduate and early-career training initiatives have played an important capacity-building role in supporting - both directly and indirectly - the professional and career development of the next generation of academic researchers and other professional experts. The Mid-Term Review (February 2015) gave the examples of Tom Rowley (a University of Cambridge PhD who is now Associate Editor at oD Russia) and Teresa Wigglesworth-Baker (a University of Sheffield PhD who has since worked as an expert for the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities). Several other researchers who benefitted from CEELBAS support during the LBAS Development Funding period have since gone to positions in NGOs and cultural organisations (e.g. Forum 18 News Service, Wroclaw College of Eastern Europe, GRAD Gallery London) and in the HE sector. Examples of the latter include: Ilya Yablokov (University of Leeds); Dina Gusejnova (QMUL); Muireann Maguire (University of Exeter); Katherine Bowers (University of British Columbia); Tauri Tuvikene (Tallinn University).

The AHRC CDT also provides a platform through which to sustain the fruitful CEELBAS partnership with oD Russia. The involvement of oDR editorial staff in CDT media training workshops and other events will help to strengthen contacts between Open Democracy and the Russian & East European Studies academic community, and this will serve to further promote the oDR website as a platform for the wider dissemination of academic research. The oDR partnership is another experience that will inform CEELBAS contributions to the two collaborative AHRC Public Policy Engagement Skills Training projects mentioned above.

The open-access CEELBAS Language Repository is now home to over 70 different sets of teaching materials, guides and reports. The Repository will continue to be maintained by UCL as an important national resource and the link to Repository was also placed to a newly created CEELBAS CDT website, thus valuable language sources will be accessible by a wider audience. The skills and experience gained by language teachers through the delivery of CEELBAS materials development and e-learning projects will also be critical to ongoing efforts to sustain national provision in these 'strategically important but vulnerable' languages. In addition, through CEELBAS training workshops, language teachers have helped to equip the Slavonic & East European postgraduate and early-career research community with a practical understanding of how to tackle the challenges of teaching the region's languages at HE level.

Other web-based resources that will be maintained by CEELBAS for the longer-term include a Database of Expertise and a Guide to Russian & Ukrainian Archives (see above), as well as an extensive set of workshop reports, research guides and podcasts.

As previous reports have stated, CEELBAS has been complemented by a number of on-going institutional initiatives in support of Russian and East European Studies. In addition to the institutional matched funding for the CEELBAS CDT, these include: the UCL Mellon Programme (dedicated to conceptualising the role of Humanities in interdisciplinary Area Studies); the investment of UCL SSEES in distance learning for UG and PG language courses; the Cambridge Committee for Russian and East European Studies (CamCREES) and the Cambridge Central Asian Network; the new programmes in Polish Studies at the University of Cambridge (launched October 2014) and the University of Oxford (launched July 2013); and the Global Europe Centre at the University of Kent. Russian & East European Studies researchers will also continue to benefit from significant support and training through cross-disciplinary programmes such as the University of Manchester's artsmethods@manchester and the University of Sheffield's Humanities Research Institute.
Sectors Education,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Security and Diplomacy
URL http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/
 
Description In the period from February 2014 - January 2016 17 awards were made to support research internships outside the HE sector. As well as enabling postgraduate researchers to work with think tanks, the media and cultural organisations in the UK (oD Russia, Project for Democratic Union, Calvert 22, GRAD Gallery), the internship scheme promoted several collaborations with international partners. Host organisations have included regional think tanks, museums, libraries, galleries and NGOs in Bulgaria, Estonia, Poland, Russia, Serbia, Ukraine and the USA. To promote this model of knowledge exchange, and to showcase some of its outcomes and impacts, a 'show and tell' workshop was held at Wolfson College, Oxford (5 February 2015). The event was attended by over 20 research students and included useful feedback from editorial staff at oD Russia, who outlined the benefits of the scheme from a host organisation's perspective (http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/ceelbas-news/events/workshops/internships-event). Below are listed some specific examples of how CEELBAS interns have contributed to the five social, cultural and media organisations. • Cambridge student Molly Flynn had an internship at GRAD Gallery, working on a press and marketing strategy for a performance event. It involved expanding the performance programme 'Peripheral Visions' to include a series of three different performances of Eastern European documentary theatre projects that ran from mid-October to mid-November. The host organisation wanted to enrich their programme through Molly's considerable knowledge and cultural contacts. Molly's excellent organisational skills and knowledge of contemporary theatre contributed significantly to the success of the project. The 'Peripheral Visions' documentary theatre programme will be featured in a number of high profile news publications. Molly contributed to raising GRAD's profile by securing significant press coverage. • During her internship in the National Museum in Warsaw Katarzyna Jezowska assisted the curatorial team with various works connected with the presentation. She also participated in daily activities concerning the Modern Design Centre's Archives. Katarzyna was cataloguing and organising data related to Polish designers whose works are in the Museum's collection. Katarzyna's work connected with organising database of Modern Design Centre will help the museum team and external researchers to use the archive. • Sam Goff had his internship in Calvert 22 Foundation. In addition to occasional editorial work, he wrote a number of excellent feature articles and news pieces for The Calvert Journal, and prepared two presentations for the editorial team. One of his articles was republished by The Guardian. He also did extensive research for Red Africa, a season of exhibitions and events to be held at Calvert 22 in 2016. The Calvert Journal's Deputy Editor emphasized the quality of Sam's work and his research skills and the quality of the articles submitted. As the result of this internship, Calvert Foundation is interested in further cooperation with CEELBAS and as CEELBAS comes to an end, there are negotiations in process for Calvert to become CEELBAS's CDT external partner which will mean that Calvert will offer more studentships and training for CEELBAS CDT research students. In addition to the Internship Scheme and the events and activities covered by previous reports, LBAS Development Funding has promoted dialogue between academic researchers and experts from outside the HE sector through: • a workshop convened to address Russian and Ukrainian journalistic practices, cultural identities and issues of governance at the regional level: Russia and Ukraine: Spotlight on the regions (UCL, 2 June 2015) - attended by over 40 delegates, including journalists and representatives from BBC Monitoring, the EBRD, the BEARR Trust, Oxford Analytica, and the Foreign Policy Centre (http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/ceelbas-news/events/workshops/regions); • a debate hosted by Pushkin House: The future of independent media in Russia (April 1st 2015) was fully-subscribed and had over 70 delegates, including CEELBAS doctoral and early-career researchers, UK and Russian journalists and editors, and a diverse 'general public' audience (http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/ceelbas-news/events/russian-media). In the reporting period, CEELBAS continued to play a key role in the development of distance learning courses and e-learning materials for the study of Slavonic and East European languages: http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/research/language/completed The open-access CEELBAS Language Repository is now home to over 70 different sets of teaching materials, guides and reports. The Repository will continue to be maintained by UCL as an important national resource and the link to Repository was also placed to a newly created CEELBAS CDT website, thus valuable language sources will be accessible by a wider audience. CEELBAS has provided travel bursaries and event-management support for the successful student-led Platform Ukraine initiative at UCL - a year-long long project to analyse the Ukraine crisis of 2014 in comparative and multi-/inter-disciplinary perspective (http://www.platformukraine.com/). CEELBAS support has helped, in particular, to publicise the project to both academic and user communities outside UCL. Feedback received by the project coordinators has highlighted the value of the inclusion of practitioners from industry and civil society organisations, as well as the participation of academics from institutions in Europe, North America and Australia. More broadly, CEELBAS internships and the Centre's other postgraduate and early-career training initiatives have played an important capacity-building role in supporting - both directly and indirectly - the professional and career development of the next generation of academic researchers and other professional experts. The Mid-Term Review (February 2015) gave the examples of Tom Rowley (a University of Cambridge PhD who is now Associate Editor at oD Russia) and Teresa Wigglesworth-Baker (a University of Sheffield PhD who has since worked as an expert for the OSCE High Commissioner on National Minorities). Several other researchers who benefitted from CEELBAS support during the LBAS Development Funding period have since gone to positions in NGOs and cultural organisations (e.g. Forum 18 News Service, Wroclaw College of Eastern Europe, GRAD Gallery London) and in the HE sector. Examples of the latter include: Ilya Yablokov (University of Leeds); Dina Gusejnova (QMUL); Muireann Maguire (University of Exeter); Katherine Bowers (University of British Columbia); Tauri Tuvikene (Tallinn University).
First Year Of Impact 2014
Sector Education,Government, Democracy and Justice,Culture, Heritage, Museums and Collections,Security and Diplomacy
Impact Types Cultural,Societal,Policy & public services
 
Title CEELBAS Language Repository 
Description Language teaching and self-study resources created through CEELBAS Language Projects. 
Type Of Material Improvements to research infrastructure 
Year Produced 2014 
Provided To Others? Yes  
Impact The resource has created bespoke materials for less-widely taught languages, all of which are available through an open access Creative Commons license. Materials have been disseminated at teacher-training and language taster events. For example (for the Hungarian language materials in the Repository): Co-operative and Multi-modal Learning: a Hungarian Teacher Training Day (UCL, 31 May 2014); Hungarian Teacher Training Day at the Hungarian Cultural Centre (London, 15 November 2014). 
URL http://digitool-b.lib.ucl.ac.uk:8881/R/QKY4MR6HXE51695N5JPYI8IDJC1HPGQQYUDQRKLQJBDD1SQP6R-01625?&loc...
 
Description Editorial and internship partnership with oD Russia 
Organisation openDemocracy.net
Country United Kingdom 
Sector Charity/Non Profit 
PI Contribution Frontlines is an editorial partnership between oDRussia and CEELBAS to promote the research of early-career academics at CEELBAS universities. CEELBAS researchers contributed articles; the CEELBAS management committee contributed academic guidance. In addition, CEELBAS has supported two research internship projects undertaken at oDR by UCL PhD students.
Collaborator Contribution The editorial team at oD Russia contributed editorial support, training, publicity and dissemination.
Impact A total of 9 articles were published in the first series (2013). This generated more than 30,000 unique hits in total. Individual articles from the series found their way into the social media streams of prominent journalists and academic experts across the world, and some were republished by other publications, including the highly respected German intellectual magazine Mercury and the International Security Network in Zurich. Further articles have been commissioned and published as a result of internship projects.
Start Year 2013
 
Description 'Selling the Samovar' symposium, The British Library (London) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact Organised by the Cambridge Courtauld Russian Art Centre (CCRAC) and the British Library, this one-day symposium coincided with the British Library's exhibition, "Propaganda: Power and Persuasion". The symposium brought together scholars to explore one of the themes of the exhibition, mainly the relationship between consumerism and commerce in art and design. The symposium was fully subscribed with 53 delegates in attendance (in addition to the speakers). Attendees ranged from graduate students and senior scholars, to auction house employees, journalists, and laypersons interested in the subject.

As a result of the success of the symposium, CCRAC and the British Library are deliberating about future collaborations.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
URL http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/ceelbas-news/events/workshops/samovar
 
Description BEARR-CEELBAS forum on 'the arts and disability' 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact Around 60 delegates participated in this event, bringing together academics (including Masters and PhD students), activists, campaigners and NGO representatives. The forum looked at how various types of disability have been portrayed in Russian and East European art and how this has shaped public attitudes to the disabled.

Feedback from the event pointed to the value of combining a practice-based focus with academic and artistic perspectives. In this way, the event brought together groups of experts who rarely have such opportunities to exchange knowledge and perspectives.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
URL http://www.bearr.org/bearr-ceelbas-forum-march-2013/
 
Description Democracy debate, EBRD (London) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact 75 delegates participated in a CEELBAS / John Smith Trust debate and workshop on 'Democracy is not always the best form of government', hosted by European Bank for Reconstruction and Development. The event brought together CEELBAS scholars and students, the 2013 and 2014 cohorts of The John Smith Trust Former Soviet Union Fellowship Programme, and an audience of UK professionals working in relevant areas.

The event assisted UK-based PhD and early-career scholars to make useful contacts with young professionals and practitioners from the countries of the former Soviet Union who are working in areas of law, civil society, the media and human rights.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2014
URL http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/ceelbas-news/events/democracy-debate
 
Description FCO seminar (London): Russia, Ukraine and the media 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Policymakers/politicians
Results and Impact 'International Broadcasting, Social Media and the New Cold War: From Sochi to Ukraine' brought together a team of researchers from the University of Manchester and Open University with analysts from the FCO's Eastern Europe & Central Asia Directorate and doctoral and early-career scholars from CEELBAS universities. It looked at how Russia Today and BBC World are interacting with social media, using the Sochi Winter Olympics and the Ukraine crisis as case studies.

The event provided a model for future collaboration between CEELBAS researchers, PhD students and FCO staff.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2014
 
Description Frontlines: Politics and Culture in the post-Soviet Space 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact This series of articles published on opendemocracy.net generated more than 30,000 unique hits in total.

Individual articles from the series found their way into the Twitter and Facebook streams of prominent journalists and academic experts across the world, and some were republished by other publications, including the highly respected German intellectual magazine Mercury and the International Security Network in Zurich.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
URL https://www.opendemocracy.net/od-russia-debates/ceelbas-debate
 
Description Ideologies, Identities and Images in Motion - CEELBAS seminar series 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.)
Results and Impact This international seminar series, with participants from across Europe, promoted the exchange of ideas across institutions, disciplines and borders.


Following this workshop series, a panel entitled Conceptualising and Reconfiguring Eurasian Borders and Space in Central Asia and the Far East was convened at the 2014 Annual Conference of the Association of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013,2014
 
Description Kent Europe Day 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact CEELBAS collaborated with the Kent Global Europe Centre to support Kent's Europe Day celebrations, including an information stand on 'Ukraine and Revolution', presentations to launch a new student journal special issue on 'Europe in the World', language taster sessions and a European Cultures show.

Three University of Kent doctoral students presented a printed edition of working papers from a previous workshop supported by CEELBAS and the Kent Graduate School. 'All things to all people? Internal and external approaches to Europeanisation' brings together short papers on aspects of Europeanisation, the challenge of its conceptualisation, and the overall future of the research agenda of European studies
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013,2014
URL http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/ceelbas-news/events/kent-europe-day
 
Description Language-Based Area Studies reception, British Academy (London) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach National
Primary Audience Other academic audiences (collaborators, peers etc.)
Results and Impact This reception featured keynote remarks by The Rt Hon David Willetts MP, then Minister for Universities & Science. It was attended by over 120 delegates drawn from HE, funding councils, cultural and diplomatic organisations, NGOs and the media.

The event highlighted the impact of the Language-Based Area Studies initiative.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
 
Description Political protests workshop with the Centre for the Study of Democracy (Sofia, Bulgaria) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact 20 delegates plus 11 speakers discussed the political protests in Bulgaria and the Balkans in 2013.

Related comment and reflection on the protests from workshop participants has been published in the British and Bulgarian media (Georgi Medarov, The Guardian, 27 November 2013: 'Resign!' - Bulgaria's protesters need a better slogan than that'; Veselin Stojnev, Trud Newspaper, 2 December 2013 (in Bulgarian): 'The Protest, the Mercedes and the Moskvich').
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
URL http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/workshops/protests
 
Description Sándor Weöres conference (UCL) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Professional Practitioners
Results and Impact On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the birth of the Hungarian poet, Sándor Weöres (1913-1989), this one-day conference brought together around 40 academics, translators, and publishers to explore Weöres's legacy and to reflect on the translation of poetry and the translation of cultures. The results of the discussion were subsequently presented at the Balassi Institute for Hungarian Studies conference in August 2013 and in an interview broadcast on the Hungarian radio station MR1-Kossuth Radio.

The event involved the participation of five publishing houses (Arc, Stork Presss, Francis Boutle, Istros Books, Jantar Publishing) which focus on literature (prose and poetry) in translation from less-widely used languages. Both publishers and academics showed an interest in a similar workshop in the future at the end of the event. Articles based on workshop presentations are currently under consideration or in press.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2013
URL http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/ceelbas-news/events/workshops/sandor-weores
 
Description Virtual conference panel for (Post)war Cosmopolitanism conference 
Form Of Engagement Activity A magazine, newsletter or online publication
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach International
Primary Audience Media (as a channel to the public)
Results and Impact A 'digital panel' was created ahead of the UCL Centre for Transnational History conference on (Post)war Cosmopolitanism: Ideas of World Order from the Seven Years' War to the Cold War (1-2 May 2014). Addressing the theme of 'Cold War Technology and Enlightenment', the panel features diverse contributions from experts from a range of disciplinary fields.

The digital panel promoted collaboration between international scholars and made their research easily accessible to a large online audience.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2014
URL http://postwarcosmopolitanismvp.wordpress.com/
 
Description eMigrating Landscapes festival (UCL) 
Form Of Engagement Activity Participation in an activity, workshop or similar
Part Of Official Scheme? No
Geographic Reach Regional
Primary Audience Public/other audiences
Results and Impact The eMigrating Landscapes Project, held with the cooperation of the organizers of UCL Festival of the Arts, created a space for public discussion of issues relating to Polish migration.

The event provided a model and inspiration for future public events.
Year(s) Of Engagement Activity 2014
URL http://www.ceelbas.ac.uk/workshops/eml/eml-report