Uzsākts darbs Upsalas centra Krievijas un Eirāzijas pētniecībai Konsultatīvajā padomē

2011.gada rudenī Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga uzsākusi darboties Upsalas centra Krievijas un Eirāzijas pētniecība Konsultatīvajā padomē (Advisory Board; Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies (UCRS)), kad dibināts 2010.gada 1.janvārī pie Upsalas Universitātes Zviedrijā kā daļa no valdības stratēģiskas iniciatīvas pētniecības jomā „politiski nozīmīgi ģeogrāfiskie reģioni”.
Septembrī Konsultatīvā padome sanāca uz pirmo sēdi Upsalā. Līdz ar Vairu Vīķi-Freibergu Padomnieku padomē darbojas: Rubens Apresjans (Ruben Apressyan) – Ētikas departamenta vadītājs Filozofijas institūtā Krievijas Zinātņu akadēmijā un morāles filozofijas profesors Lomonosova Maskavas Universitātē; Juka Gronovs (Jukka Gronow) – socioloģijas profesors Helsinku Universitātē; Henrijs Heils (Henry Hale)  - politikas zinātnes un starptautisko attiecību asociētais profesors un Eiropas, Krievijas un Eirāzijas studiju institūta direktors Džordža Vašingtona Universitātē ; Henrihs Fogels (Heinrich Vogel) – ekonomikas profesors un valdes loceklis Vācijas starptautisko un drošības attiecību institūtā Berlīnē un Sia Spilipoula Akermarka (Sia Spiliopoulou Åkermark) – tiesību zinātņu asociētā profesore un Ālandu salu Miera institūta direktore.

No kreisās: Jukka Gronow, Henry Hale, Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga, Sia Spiliopoulou Åkermark un Ruben Apressyan.
Foto: UCRS

Plašāka informācija par pētniecības centru (angļu valodā):

 Advisory Board visits UCRS

UCRS Advisory Board had its first meeting on September 22 and 23. The main
purpose of the Advisory Board is to lend its support and expertise to UCRS
in order to create a research platform of highest international standard.
Members of Advisory Board spent two days of fruitful discussions with UCRS
Research Directors, the Board of the Centre and the Director. The meeting
was concluded on Friday with lunch with the Vice-Chancellor of Uppsala
University. The Advisory Board will meet for two days once every year.

Members of the Advisory Board are Ruben Apressyan - Head of the Department
of Ethics at the Institute of Philosophy, Russian Academy of Sciences, and
Professor of Moral Philosophy at Lomonosov Moscow State University, Jukka
Gronow - Professor of Sociology at Helsinki University, Henry Hale -
Associate Professor of Political Science and International Affairs, and
Director of Institute for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies at George
Washington University,Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga – former President of the
Republic of Latvia and Professor of Psychology at Université de Montréal, Heinrich Vogel - Professor of Economics and member of the board of the German Institute for International and Security Affairs in Berlin and Sia Spiliopoulou Åkermark - Associate
Professor of Law and the Director of the Åland Islands Peace Institute.

About Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies
Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies (UCRS) was inaugurated on January 1, 2010, as part of the government’s strategic initiative in the research field “politically important geographic regions.” At UCRS, there is a permanent staff of researchers at the center, but many more is associated with the center for varying periods of time – from both other departments and other institutions of higher learning, in Sweden and abroad.
UCRS is an integral part of an existing research environment, that of Uppsala Forum on Peace, Democracy and Justice, which has already been designated a main area of strength at Uppsala University. Recognizing the strategic importance that developments in Russia and the post-Soviet space have to society and to the business sector, Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies is designed to serve not only as a center of scientific excellence but also as national resource center. It is the outspoken ambition of Uppsala University that this strategic research area shall become one of its most important profiles.

Research at UCRS
Uppsala Centre for Russian and Eurasian Studies (UCRS) is an integrated multi-disciplinary long-term research program with an in-depth focus on recent developments in Russia, and in the post-Soviet space. It is designed to meet the highest international standards of scientific excellence and spans across the humanities and the social sciences, as well as law and theology. Given its broad multi-disciplinary scope, grounded in common interests amongst participating scholars, UCRS is a research platform flexible in adapting and adjusting to emerging new realities that call for new approaches.
The UCRS research ambition is divided into three thematic areas: State and Market, Identity Formation and Russia’s neighbouring countries.
State and Market
“State and Market” will bring together a team of researchers with a mission to map out and understand the impact of the introduction of a whole new set of rules of the game. Their more specific tasks will be to investigate how various agencies and officials have responded to the transformation of the legal order, how the post-Soviet state has coped with the challenge of securing contracts and property rights, how former state-owned enterprises have adjusted to the market, how energy policy has become an important foreign policy issue, how households have evolved strategies to cope with fundamentally new realities, and how, in the Russian case, the center has faced the regional dilemma that rests in sustaining organized society in remote regions that may have been economically viable only under a non-market oriented Soviet order.

Research Director for thematic area State and Market is Stefan Hedlund, Prof. of Soviet and East European Studies
Identity formation
The research area on identity formation aims to conduct high-quality research, in an international interdisciplinary environment, on the various processes which characterize Russia’s new political, social and cultural identity. What are the factors shaping Russia’s self-understanding? Which mechanisms are central to identity formation? How do identities compete with one another in the political and cultural arenas? What is Europe’s role in the various identity-related processes at work in Russia today? These and other issues are addressed from a variety of scholarly perspectives, including anthropology, history of ideas, jurisprudence, linguistics, literary studies, philosophy, political science and religious studies. Several identity markers will be studied, such as ethnicity, gender, power relations, religion and language. Various perspectives on Russian identity, including interpretations of the relations between centre and periphery, as well as different ideological visions of the country’s role on the geopolitical scene, will be examined by Swedish and international researchers. Of particular interest is the character of human rights discourse in Russia. It is the ambition of the research area to contribute, through the advanced study of identity formation processes, to a deeper understanding of developments in Russia, as well as to new theoretical developments within the disciplines represented in the research area.

Research Director for thematic area Identity Formation is Elena Namli, Professor.

Russia's neighbouring countries
Within the thematic area of Russia's neighboring countries, post-Soviet developments are studied in the light of the processes of social, political and economic transformation that have characterized these countries. Geographically the area covers the Baltic States, Ukraine, Georgia, Moldova, Kyrgyzstan, Azerbaijan, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Belorussia. The main issues studied relate to issues of international and regional cooperation, the EU's and NATO's eastward enlargement, energy policy, terrorism and ethnic conflicts and types of political regime and democratization. Of equal interest are language issues, language policy, minority politics and diaspora affairs, and issues related to transnational minorities, historical memory, and ethnicity from a historical, cultural, political and social perspective. Analytically, this thematic area spans across multiple disciplines, such as the political science, peace and conflict research, international studies, cultural geography and demography, sociology, anthropology, history and linguistics.

Research Director for thematic area Russia and the Post-Soviet area is Li Bennich-Björkman, Professor.