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CEU SUN Team
| Course list by year
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Courses in 2010
Advanced European Union Legal Practice -  Special Lisbon Treaty Edition In co-operation with the Department of Legal Studies of CEU and the Total LawTM team
This advanced course is about the practice of European Union Law. Participants receive hands-on insider analysis about the functioning of the European Union. The program is designed to combine seminars on different subjects as well as workshops supporting the topic addressed in these seminars or some aspects thereof. The course will also cover the current issues of the European project such as the institutional agenda and the Lisbon treaty as well as the consequences of the financial crisis.
The Total LawTM team, led by Joseph Weiler, Joseph Straus Professor of Law and Jean Monnet Chair at New York University School of Law, is a unique blend of well known academics and senior officials working in the European Union institutions who have also written widely in the field. The members of this team are José M. de Areilza, Professor of European Union Law and Vice Dean of Legal Studies at Instituto de Empresa, Madrid; Kieran St C. Bradley, Head of Unit in the Legal Service of the European Parliament, Brussels; Damian Chalmers, Professor in EU law at the London School of Economics and Political Science; Miguel Poiares Maduro, Professor at the European University Institute, Florence; Imola Streho, Senior Lecturer at Sciences Po, Paris and Emily K. White, coordinator of the Team, who is Research Fellow at the Jean Monnet Center at NYU Law school.
The 2010 summer course was designed and put together by the Total LawTM team. The particular composition of the team gives the seminar and the workshop both that advanced knowledge and the insider view that is so valuable for the participants.
Aspects of Responsibility
This summer school focuses on moral responsibility as a central problem of philosophical ethics and metaphysics. It also explores the relationship between responsibility and other important philosophical concepts such as agency, freedom, blame, moral luck, emotions, punishment, character and institutional action. By considering different aspects of responsibility, this course seeks to show why responsibility matters and how much really turns on our perception of ourselves as responsible beings.The three main questions about moral responsibility that the course will seek to answer are the following:
- Under what conditions can someone be said to be a morally responsible agent?
- Do human beings satisfy these conditions (i.e. are they morally responsible agents)?
- What are the normative implications of being a morally responsible agent?
The course will be divided into two parts:The first part is devoted to the metaphysics of moral responsibility and will therefore be concerned with various answers to questions (i) and (ii), including a range of classical as well as more recent incompatibilist and compatibilist approaches.The second part of the course will concentrate on responsibility as an ethical and general normative concept and will therefore center on question (iii).
Beliefs and Decisions: of Minds and Machines
The aim of the course is to demonstrate that some basic principles of decision making can provide a unifying framework for constructing intelligently behaving artefacts on one hand, and for explaining human and animal cognition both in simple as well as in the most complex domains of behaviour on the other hand. To achieve this, lectures will progress via domains of gradually increasing abstraction that machine learning algorithms and humans deal with starting from representing uncertainty, beliefs about unobserved quantities, through learning internal models of the environment, to making adaptive and successful decisions.
Culture as Resource: Cultural Practices and Policies After '89This course is supported by Canada Research Chair in Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, Canada
This summer school course has two main aims. First, it will investigate the significant transformations taking place in the sphere of cultural consumption and production in the context of globalization. In doing so, the course will go beyond an assessment of the consequences and repercussions of intensified cultural transfers that have occurred as a result of globalization and consider a more serious and as yet under-explored transformations of the very character of the cultural sphere. Second, it will consider the links between various cultural practices and democracy, and consider the implications of the contemporary transformations of the cultural sphere for democratic futures on both the local and global levels. The course will consider these issues in both their contemporary manifestations and in historical perspective.
Ecosystem Vulnerability to Climate Change: Methods for Assessment, Observations, and Forecast In cooperation with EC TEMPUS project "Improvement of education on environmental management"; the University of Natural Resources and Applied Life Sciences (BOKU), Austria and University College Cork, Ireland
Formerly a subject of academic enquiries, ecosystem vulnerability to climate change becomes a very practical issue. Many sectors, including forestry, biodiversity conservation, water management, agriculture (to name a few) need information about ongoing and future states of ecosystems. This is a field of studies where natural scientists meet their colleagues from social and policy science more often than usual, and where uncertainties are particularly high, because ecosystem complexity meets here the complexity of social systems, which can be even less predictable. Understanding the uncertainties is a key to successful research in the field; however, differences in academic backgrounds and the professional experience of people, even working in the same team, often prevent research teams from formulating a shared vision and achieving satisfactory results. New developments constantly appearing in this dynamic field make the task of staying up-to-date even more challenging, especially in disciplines outside the researcher's particular area of expertise (otherwise relevant though).
Feminist Intersectionality and Political Discourse In cooperation with the Center for Policy Studies, Central European University, Budapest, Hungary
The concept of intersectionality has been attracting growing attention in recent years for its theoretical, methodological, and practical value in understanding multiple inequalities. Increasingly, debates on intersectionality are present beyond feminist theorizing. They have emerged in critical policy studies, social movement research, analyses of political discourse and policy framing, research on institutions, and in legal research. The notion of multiple inequalities is also used, to an ever-growing extent, to inform policy and legal practice. This course aims not only to unpack pertinent theoretical and conceptual debates, but also to link theoretical thinking to doing intersectional research in an increasingly intersectionalized policy environment. The course will explore intersectionality and: comparative approaches, developing standards of measurement, understanding institutional change, and discursive shifts from a homogenous gender category to one that is embedded in a complex web of multiple inequalities.
Freedom and Experiences of Subjugation
Philosophers and political theorists have debated the question of the nature of freedom in the western intellectual tradition at least since the Stoics. Yet questions regarding the interpretation of experiences of those whose voices have been denied by the very subjugation of which they speak have emerged in new and ever more poignant ways in recent decades. The current situation calls for a forum that brings both sets of questions into dialogue.On the philosophical side, long-running discussions of the nature of freedom have included, for example, the supposed distinction between "negative" and "positive" notions of freedom, and the relation between freedom and agency, autonomy, (human) rights, power, and so on. In addition, in recent years theorists have re-introduced neo-republican conceptions of freedom, on the one hand, as well as expressed greater skepticism toward neo-liberal and individualistic treatments of freedom. In other areas of social theory, however, the challenge of understanding the experiences of what many label "subjugation" or "oppression" without condescendingly imposing external ideals of individualism, agency, or secular self-determination - not to mention the question of whether and how "the subaltern" can "speak" - has come to be taken much more seriously.The plan for this summer school is to bring these two lines of investigation into contact. We will conduct a careful, critical analysis of debates about the nature of freedom (or liberty), its relation to concepts such as autonomy, rights, and democracy, and attend to the social implications of various dominant understandings of freedom in the contemporary global context. At the same time, we will examine accounts of experiences of what has been labeled "subjugated" and "oppressed" existences, both from the first- and third-person point of view. We will attend to the question of interpretation, looking closely at issues of cross-cultural communication and the dangers of cultural imperialism.In the end the goal will be to enrich and disturb standard assumptions about freedom, liberation, and oppression operative in western, liberal discourses, while, at the same time to search for possibilities to enchance the conditions of freedom, whatever those turn out to be.
Integrity Summer School 2010 - Leadership and Management for Integrity: Strategies and Approaches The courses are convened by Tiri - Making Integrity Work, London
Leadership and Management for Integrity
Raising integrity standards of organisations is increasingly recognized as an effective tool to foster development and strengthen legitimate democratic governance. Organisational integrity here refers in large measure to internal processes of control and value-driven reform. Held for the sixth time in 2010, this course meets a need for critical and strategic approaches to successfully reform institutions to improve levels of governance and integrity. The domains where demand for integrity training is strongest are: public administration, business, academia, and the judiciary. The course thus focuses on attracting practitioners from these fields.
Read more on the course website:
Integrity in Political Society
Common concerns are voiced about issues of integrity in the realm of politics such as electoral fraud, undemocratic and weak party systems, non-transparent legislative processes, money politics, and favourable deals for those with access to political leaders. Why is political society filled with so many integrity traps? What can be done to reduce the dangers associated with these traps both for players in the political realm as well as with the wider community be they members of the state, private sector or civil society? These are among the questions to be explored during this course.
Read more on the course website:
Pro-Poor Integrity
Limited transparency and accountability undermines governmental capacity for the implementation of important development policies, especially for the poor and marginalized. Many citizens and civil society organisations find it difficult to play their part to improve and influence development policies. Governments sometimes fail to be responsive to the needs of the poor, and communities often lack the capabilities to secure their rights to essential services. Corruption and integrity problems remain a foremost development challenge.
Intergovernmental Fiscal Relations and Local Financial ManagementCo-sponsored by the Local Government and Public Service Reform Initiative of the Open Society Institute, Budapest
This summer school offers an analytical framework for understanding and implementing fiscal decentralization: improving assignment of functions and responsibilities and the fiscal relations between the central, regional, and local governments.Fiscal decentralisation is closely related to the "restructuring of the public economy" and involves rethinking the role of the state in different sectors, such as social policy, education, housing, communal services, etc. The process of restructuring took much more time than it was originally planned. Furthermore, the process involved little if no coordination at all among the sectors, and therefore has not taken into consideration the effect this may have on fiscal decentralization. In fact sectoral reform has often not organized itself along the lines of fiscal decentralization principles at all.The course will start with eight distance learning modules introducing participants to the principles and legal framework of decentralisation, expenditure and revenue assignment and intergovernmental transfer.The two-week workshop style course will include an advanced discussion and analysis through exercises and case studies from the region, in the following areas: 1) worldwide trends in fiscal decentralization and the concept and practice of the assignment of expenditure responsibilities and revenue authority; 2) the design of various forms of central to sub-national transfers and local own-source revenues; creditworthiness and the financial risks of local authorities; and 3) the emerging topic of budgeting and local public management.Attuned to new teaching techniques, the workshop aims to achieve the right mix of exercises, lectures, and interactive learning methods. This includes the dissemination of materials prior to the course presentation electronically. The course will use distance learning techniques to teach the basics, and during the course the group will focus more on the case studies and exercises.
Lived Space in Past and Present: Challenges in the Research and Management of Townscape and Cultural HeritageIn cooperation with the European University Institute (EUI) at Kőszeg, Hungary
Urban settlement has always had a strong and complex spatial dimension. Each town or city developed its unique structure and built form, which has undergone several changes, including rapid and fundamental alterations in modern times. The result of these processes: our urban cultural heritage, its research, protection and possible uses form the core of the planned course. The participants will investigate the interaction of people and place across the medieval, early modern and modern periods. Through a series of topographical features, which were present in various forms in the majority of medieval European towns (defences; squares and streets; churches, chapels, monasteries; cemeteries; marketplaces and shops, etc.), we shall examine how the built form of settlements reflected and influenced the needs of medieval and early modern society. An equally important issue is the place, role and use of these elements of urban environment in our modern world. Participants are encouraged to contribute with examples from their own research or practical work experience.This summer school will be complemented by another one-week course organized by the European University Institute (EUI) at Kőszeg, under the direction of József Laszlovszky, the main theme of which will be the principles and practice of heritage management in historic towns. The participants of the CEU SUN course are encouraged to apply to the course at Kőszeg and will have priority in the selection among the applicants.
Meaning, Context, Intention
What we express, communicate by uttering a sentence varies with the context of utterance. What is the role of semantics in bringing this about? According to one simple model, a semantic theory assigns to sentences relative to contexts what would be expressed by those sentences in normal assertive utterances, by assigning values to the meaningful parts of the sentences in those contexts and combining them via a recursive process. According to another, radically different model, the meanings of words are rules that constrain the use of expressions, but there is no notion of what is said by a sentence (as opposed to the person) that matches the speaker's communicative intentions, and that plays a fundamental role in the account of communication. There are many versions of each of these views of linguistic communication. How we think about language is determined by which we adopt. The purpose of this course is to bring together leading researchers who have formed the debate, together with some younger researchers with new approaches.
Media Development and Democratization: Understanding and Implementing Monitoring and Evaluation Programs
Organized by the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania, and the Center for Media and Communication Studies (CMCS) at the Central European University (CEU)
This intensive summer course on media development and democratization is designed to help researchers from academia and civil society gain a better understanding of the history, theory, practice, current trends, and differing methodologies involved with the monitoring and evaluation of international aid programs and their impact, with a focus on the role of radio as a medium for development goals.The goals of the course are:
- To stimulate and advance research, scholarship and academic discourse on monitoring and evaluation in media development;
- To identify a core group of scholars working in this area and nurture their research interests and capabilities with the aim of future collaborations amongst faculty, course participants, institutions and CEU;
- To give participants the opportunity to gain valuable experience in monitoring and evaluation through the seminars, group project work, and field trips.
Mediation and Other Methods to Foster Democratic DialogueIn co-operation with Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, Yeshiva University, New York and Hamline University School of Law, Minnesota
In a two-week course, the program facilitates the exchange of ideas and cooperative projects among mediation scholars, practitioners, trainers, and students in the East and West. In addition to providing an introduction to mediation, it provides a teaching and training template for scholars and practitioners from around the world to adapt for use in their home countries.Through lecture, discussion, demonstration and role-plays, students will be introduced to mediation and facilitation theory and skills and examine the impact of culture and context on the consensus-building approach adopted. The course also will examine a variety of strategies to foster and support democratic and constructive dialogue. The interactive presentation of the material is designed to offer teaching and training models to those course participants who want to develop programs in their own countries.Participants should come prepared for a highly engaging learning experience.Participants who have the means and ability to teach and train in transition countries will be given preference for acceptance.Case examples will focus on both civil and criminal mediation models and scenarios from both the United States and Central and Eastern Europe, including efforts in Central and Eastern Europe to promote meaningful democratic dialogue in times of crisis involving high-conflict situations and inter-ethnic tensions.Mediation is a newly emerging field in both the west and the east. Legislation mandating the use of mediation has outpaced the development of both theory and practice, and this course is designed in part to fill that gap, cultivating scholars, teachers, trainers, and practitioners in this developing and important arena.
Mental Disability Law in Practice In co-operation with Mental Disability Advocacy Center (MDAC)
This two-week applied legal practice course aims to strengthen the professional development of participants - practising lawyers, activists and academics in the field of in mental health and disability rights law from Europe and Africa. With an emphasis on exploring rights in real life, this course introduces interdisciplinary perspectives from social sciences, politics, social work and clinical sciences.The five faculty members are all internationally recognized and outstanding scholars and activists in the field. Together, they have experience in human rights advocacy, teaching and programming in central and eastern Europe, Africa and North America and are sensitive to and knowledgeable about the specific needs and problems of these regions from where the participants will come.The course focuses on the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities - a human rights treaty which entered into force in 2008. Using the Convention and other international human rights instruments, the course will heighten participants' awareness of the legislative and policy implications of their mental health lawyering, and will raise the awareness of the range of ways that participants can engage with reforms in their home jurisdictions.The course will advance participants' skills to effectively represent people with mental health disabilities in courtrooms and other settings and develop participants' understanding and knowledge of the issues in such a way as to facilitate further postgraduate study.The course uses innovative teaching methods and encourages participants to reflect on law in practice, and how lawyers can impact upon policy-making at the domestic level to ensure the implementation of international human rights law. The methods include a site visit to a mental health institution, a site visit to a community-based service for people with mental health disabilities, and interviews with people with mental health disabilities.
Messianism - Jewish and Christian PerspectivesIn co-operation with the Center for Jewish Studies, The Gerst Program for Political, Economic, and Humanistic Studies, Center for International Studies at Duke University (USA). Supported by the Carnegie Corporation of New York.
This course will explore the ancient messianic idea, its spatial expansion, and its ideational development up to the present. The topic will be approached from a wide variety of disciplines (Political Science, History, Philosophy, Anthropology), sharing a common focus on the messiah as a central and enduring symbol of Jewish and Christian societies and their interconnected eschatological expectations.The main aim and objective of this course is to provide a solid knowledge of the role of messianism in shaping Jewish and Christian traditions in order to
- relate this knowledge to phenomena in modern society and thought,
- create the ability to evaluate the ongoing relevance of the messianic traditions in modern thought and politics, and
- identify the religious dimensions in seemingly secular ideologies and movements.
This summer school is divided into two one-week sections. The first week covers the ancient oriental origins of the messianic idea and its articulation in Judaism and Christianity up to the Late Middle Ages. The second week focuses on the messianic symbolisms in modern Christians and Jewish societies but also in the political visions of liberalism and socialism, in Romantic literature, as well as in idealist and existential philosophy.
Jean Monnet Summer School on
Social Integration and the Romany Minority in Europe Today: Linking Policy and Research to Work against Poverty, Discrimination and Ethnic Conflict The course is generously funded by the European Commission within the framework of the Jean Monnet Programme, Life Long Learning, Information and Research Activities
There are scores of academically trained civil servants and NPO activists working to reduce poverty, discrimination and increase social integration of Roma. There are many academic researchers scattered through Europe working on similar topics. The links in this field between research and policy are weak. This summer course, preceded by an E-seminar in spring, will connect professionals who are aware of each other but lack a framework for learning from each other's work to build a strong European network for research-informed policy work on Romany issues.The fundamental forum of this course will be workshop- and seminar-based discussions of theoretical issues, best practice and case studies in the field. These will be complemented by a few formal (lecture-like) presentations. A significant role will be given to presentations by course participants in order to cultivate a strong, supportive but critical culture where trainees engage with each others' work and challenges. The course will also contain a practical exercise in devising policy papers on particular issues, with a number of small working parties producing these under supervision from senior faculty.Topics covered include Racism, culturalism and social exclusion; Evaluation programs in Romany policy; Ethnic monitoring: legal and practical issues; Equality policy; Resources for building linguistic diversity with special reference to Romani; How roma community studies can be used in policy formation in a new member state; Marginality, multiculturalism and policies towards Roma in new Member states; Roma demographic studies and their policy assumptions; Demographic policies and health interventions among the poor in Eastern Europe.
Read more on the course website:
www.summer.ceu.hu/romany
Sustainable Human Development: From International Frameworks to Regional PoliciesIn partnership with the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP)
The course is the fifth edition of the summer courses conducted jointly by the Central European University and the United Nations Development Programme alongside with other Human Development (HD) / Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) related activities being implemented or managed by UNDP. The course in 2010 will have an explicit policy focus and will bring together practitioners, mid- and high-level policy makers, academia, and civil society activists from countries in the region as well as experts on issues of HD and MDGs, both from UNDP, CEU and other European institutions.
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