Academic Partnership for the study of the Middle East and North Africa in Central and Eastern Europe

The project aims to establish a partnership of departments located at CEE universities that conduct research on MENA for joint activities that include research and creating didactic materials. The focus would be: • On CEE (economic, political, …) role in MENA region – to enhance internationalisation of research outputs and have a say in studies related to EU-MENA relations (that are often Western-centric). Here the outputs would be articles, monographs, and conferences • On MENA region itself – by producing reliable, high quality teaching materials to fill in the gap in local curricula. Here the output would be enhancing selected syllabi and creating materials in local languages similar to http://oislamie.sgh.waw.pl or http://socialworlds.sgh.waw.pl (the first one is about Islam, but in PL, the latter on social inquiry in EN and some CEE languages) The idea behind the partnership is to achieve a scale effect – as single departments dealing with MENA region we strive to be included in the international scholarship on an individual level. Together, by bringing in the wide range of CEE perspectives, we can contribute to the international scholarship by offering an input on what is the role and position of CEE in MENA.