Promoting Doctoral Training in Language Based Area Studies

18/01/2012

Working in close cooperation with our partners in Swansea, the School has been awarded two ESRC studentships in the new Language Based Area Studies pathway of the Wales Doctoral Training Centre.

The first studentship will be in the field of Franco-German Relations. Though the Franco-German relationship is the principal bilateral relationship within the European Union, its importance has been consistently underplayed both in academic studies and in appraisals of UK leverage in EU bargaining. The proposed studentship will address one of the following themes: the history of Franco- German bilateralism; Franco-German bilateralism within EU institutions; comparative policy analysis in fields of Franco-German bargaining (for example defence, foreign policy, economic and monetary union, and agriculture), the institutionalisation of the Franco-German relationship in the fields of culture, language, and youth and educational exchanges.

The second proposed studentship will be in the field of North-East-Central Europe. Bids are welcome that focus on any individual northern, central or eastern European state or cluster of states, especially when this focus promotes language acquisition in Polish or other ECE languages. The studentship will likely be focussed in one of the following areas: the relationship of Euro Area ‘outsiders’ like Denmark, Sweden, several East Central European states, and two of the Baltic States with an emerging core monetary Europe; the ‘Weimar Triangle’ of Germany, France and Poland; Russia, Germany and North-East-Central Europe; Comparative policy analysis in energy, foreign policy, monetary policy, education, agriculture or other relevant fields.

These bids engage with the overarching emerging theme of the developmental Language-Based Area Studies pathway of the DTC: the centrality of forms of bilateralism in the broader context of regional integration (Europe and Asia). The supervisory team will be Kenneth Dyson, FBA (head of the European Studies RAE panel in 1996 and 2001) and Alistair Cole, AcSS (vice-chair of ESRC panel B, including Area Studies).They are respectively experts in French and German politics, government, and public policies. Cole and Dyson have cooperated extremely closely since, in 2004, they jointly established the European Governance, Identities, and Public Policy Research Unit. EGIPP was identified as excellent in the 2008 RAE and was recently the recipient of a major seminar series on European Economic Governance, funded by the European Commission. The proposed studentship will strengthen the European Area Studies cluster within the REF return, and the PhD student will be fully integrated into the activities of the EGIPP research unit

Further information will be posted on the web once application procedures are known.