Events

This workshop at Ilia State University is organized with the support of University of Kent, UK. It will bring together scholars from the humanities and social sciences, from Georgian and European Universities: Ilia State University, Tbilisi, Georgia; University of Kent, UK; Ruhr University Bochum, Germany; Georgian University, Tbilisi, Georgia.

In May 2005, Georgia joined the European Higher Education Area and received the state support, as well as the support of European and American donor organizations for reforming its university system. In the wake of those quantifiable and documented reforms, as well as ongoing process of development, this workshop asks how we can evaluate their general societal and cultural effects in creating a resilient and progressive nation, committed to fairness and equality. These general effects go beyond the university structures and are harder to evaluate. This workshop will ask what work, in the disciplines of humanities and social sciences, could be undertaken to assess the nature and durability of the effects of the reforms in the general society, and also asks what the continuing and future role of higher education might be in further advancing Georgia as a progressive and resilient nation.

Although social research or policy analysis are widely used in the analysis of education worldwide, this project will take a different approach, documenting and analysing the direct and indirect effects of higher education in a social or socio-cultural perspective.

We will ask how far and in what ways the newly accessible and inclusive higher education system has and will contribute to the improvement of civil society more generally.

The workshop will contribute to the vision of the role of the higher education sector in developing the culture required to promote and sustain a resilient society based on fairness and equality. We will ask how far and in what ways the newly accessible and inclusive higher education system has and will contribute to the improvement of civil society more generally. The premise is that the value of economic and structural reforms, to be purposeful and sustainable, should take root in a resilient civil society, and we seek to establish what the role of cultural experts can be in analysing and contributing to social change.