Jean Monnet Chair 2014-2017
Reader Professor Amelia Hadfield has been appointed the Jean Monnet Chair for Canterbury Christ Church University.
Entitled Canterbury Pilgrims: The Journey to European Integration; the aim is to establish a robust spectrum of blended teaching and learning activities to foster progressive insight on EU integration.
Professor Amelia Hadfield alongside guest lecturer George Cunningham of the EU External Action Service (EEAS), and Quo Vadis 1 students, in November 2014.
As part of her role, Professor Amelia Hadfield will oversee:
Two Third Year EU Foreign Affairs Modules (Quo Vadis 1/Autumn; Quo Vadis 2/Spring).
These will be incorporated in our BSc in European Studies and will include webinars, an EU summit simulation and a team-taught plenary, as well as guest lecturers from EU institutions.
Jean Monnet Mini Classes
10 hours of foreign policy teaching to support two proposed Jean Monnet Modules:
Jean Monnet Master Classes
Two one-day EU foreign affairs workshops actively supporting MSc research students.
Jean Monnet Junior Day
Annual one-day workshop for local high school students covering the basics of EU integration, ending with an EU summit simulation podcast. Read about our Jean Monnet Junior Day, Oct 2015.
EU Integration in the Classroom
Two annual one-day team taught pedagogic plenaries supporting best-practice teaching on EU integration for the University’s Faculty of Education.
EU Pilgrim Podcasts
Three one-hour podcasts providing highlights on current EU public and foreign affairs. These will be publically accessible and will feature both Kent-based and national academics and relevant EU practitioners.
Blogs on Europe Competition
As one of its last activities, the Jean Monnet Chair ran a blog competition for full-time first year undergraduate students in politics. Students could submit 500 word blog posts on any topic related to Europe and winners were rewarded with a £250 book voucher for the CCCU Bookshop. The idea behind the competition was not only to support students financially in the first couple of weeks at CCCU, but also to encourage think about key issues that they will be studying over the course of their degree.
All blog posts are available here
Networking with Colleagues in Europe
Contributing to the online Jean Monnet comunity.
Our students on Europe...
‘To study the EU as part of a politics course at university is basic common sense. Too often, the newspapers shape the public's perception of the EU. It is only right for higher education to fill the gap, and give the European Union a fair hearing.
‘Having been taught the history of Europe leading up to and during the creation of the European project, I despair at the idea that Europe has nothing to offer us, and that we would be better outside the EU. Britain fought to liberate much of Europe from tyranny. It would be cold-hearted for Britain to shirk its responsibilities, and simply abandon the EU, at a time of grave economic crisis.
‘Prime Minister Churchill spoke of the need for a United States of Europe. In an ever-increasingly complex world, Britain can only be stronger, if it remains inside this union.’
‘As a graduate of Politics & International Relations at CCCU, and now a postgraduate student at St Antony’s College, Oxford studying EU-Latin America relations, I was particularly thrilled to hear that CCCU is opening a brand new Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence. This is a fantastic opportunity for Politics and IR students, locals and academics from other institutions alike to conduct focused research or indeed become more familiar with the EU, especially after the recent referendum. I wish the academic team headed by the seasoned EU scholar Dr Hadfield every success in the upcoming three years.’
News from Europe
The Twitter project @RealTimeWW1 has won this year's Charlemagne Youth Prize . In this project, the students of the Master in European Contemporary History at the University of Luxembourg tweet stories and events from the First World War exactly 100 years after they happened – on the same date and, if possible, even at the same time.
These tweets shall not only pull the reader into battles, but also seat him in the kitchens where flour and meat are scarce, show him the factories where women increasingly replace those men wounded or killed in battle, open the doors to fashion stores where styles from enemy bellingerents are replaced by national designs.
The students aim to show that if there is war, it is everywhere everyday, and also how easily small conflicts can turn into horrid battles. In a time where peace is by many in the EU taking for granted, the students want to make their followers aware what great an achievement the peaceful Europe is in which we are living today.
Until we won the Charlemagne Youth Prize this year, @RealTimeWW1 was merely a digital humanities experiment of our Master students. It somehow still is, and will always be, as we are no 'professionals'. However now, with a steadily growing public, we decided to go a bit bigger: next to presenting the project at universities, conferences and museums, we now took the step to another social medium - Facebook. The First World War goes on for another three and a half years, and so will we, telling the small and the enormous details of the Great War - if the social media and our endurance allow.
Mechthild Herzog
You can find out more about this project for yourself by visiting Real Time WW1 on Facebook .