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Two new books have been released as part of the Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Network project "Linking to Europe at the Periphery" (LEAP), which investigated the European Union’s impact on countries at its periphery. The books include research contributions from the professors of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Dr. David Aprasidze and Dr. Giorgi Gvalia.

Professor Aprasidze's chapter "From Dreaming of to Dealing with Europe: How the Political Elite in Georgia Frames and Contests the EU", is part of the book Reconfiguring EU Peripheries, published by Helsinki University Press. Prof. Aprasidze explores the perceptions of Georgia’s political elite towards EU integration. The book is available here: Reconfiguring EU Peripheries.

Meanwhile, professor Gvalia’s chapter, "Contesting or Supporting? The EU Integration Project and the Georgian Youth", appears in the book Imagining Europe in Times of War and Crises, published by Springer. Prof. Gvalia examines, how young people in Georgia view the EU integration process, considering the broader geopolitical and social contexts. The book can be accessed here from December 2024: Imagining Europe in Times of War and Crises.

The LEAP project, which concluded in 2022, involved collaboration between academic and research institutions in Turkey, Kosovo, Georgia, Ukraine, and Romania. Coordinated by the Middle East Technical University Centre for European Studies, mainly by Prof. Basak Alpan,  the project aimed to explore how the EU is taught in peripheral countries and create an environment for exchanging knowledge and experiences on the methodological and theoretical challenges of studying Europe at the periphery. It also sought to examine how the EU influences the everyday lives of people, particularly youth and civil society activists, and assess the roots of Euroscepticism and the barriers to European integration in these regions.

 2024