DAAD stepping up collaboration with troubled Belarus

The German Academic Exchange Service or DAAD has announced recommendations for academic collaboration with Belarus, emphasising that in the current situation it is important to maintain and expand links to keep communication channels open and enable change.

Students, teachers and researchers in Belarus have been supporting mass campaigns for freedom and democracy in Belarus since the country’s elections last August.

Some lecturers have lost their jobs and some students have been denied the opportunity to continue their education after supporting the protests, according to a report by Belsat.

Following consultations with experts, the DAAD Competence Centre for International Academic Cooperation, which supports universities in establishing international links, has drawn up a kick-off paper outlining how German universities and research centres can back institutions in Belarus.

The paper, “Academic Cooperation with Belarus: Prospects for cooperation in a challenging situation in terms of international higher education and research politics”, summarises recommendations by experts from various institutions.

They stress the key importance of trustful personal relations as a basis for possible collaborative programmes with Belarus and suggest in particular working with younger researchers to support them and thus contribute to generational change in Belarus’ higher education and research system.

The paper also emphasises the significance of integrating universities outside Belarus’ capital of Minsk and taking advantage of collaborating in trilateral projects, especially if scientists and scholars from Belarus’ neighbours Poland and Lithuania are involved.

Setting out from these recommendations, DAAD calls on German universities to apply for collaborative programmes with Belarus. Another objective here is to strengthen teaching and research in regional science focusing on Belarus in Germany.

“Now in particular, we are seeking to provide support for the existing centres of Central and Eastern European research at German universities and to enable them to deal more intensively with Belarus, [and for] partnership-based exchange with the country and its citizens,” says DAAD President Joybrato Mukherjee.

From 2021 on, DAAD will also be supporting the work of the Belarusian-German History Commission set up earlier this year. It comprises 16 historians from both countries and focuses in particular on joint research in Belarus’ and German history and its transnational and mutual relations. The commission is run by the German Association for East European Studies and the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus and is funded by Germany’s Federal Foreign Office.

“The paper is intended to draw more attention to academic cooperation with Belarus among the German academic community and the public at large,” explains Mukherjee, adding that academic exchange also provides academics in Belarus who already have international links with a certain level of protection locally.

Furthermore, DAAD is doubling its budget for Belarus’ students and researchers to create more opportunities for exchange and change.

Michael Gardner E-mail: michael.gardner@uw-news.com