Research Projects

The current development of the Aydar-Arnasay lakes system (AALS), which is one of the remarkable examples of the human-induced ecosystems, depends on numerous political and environmental factors. On the one hand, the political tensions and disagreements between Central Asian republics alter the implementation of the coordinated water policy in terms of agreed water discharges to the Aydar-Arnasay lakes. On the other hand, forecasting change of the regional climate has an uncertain influence on these lakes.

The overarching goal of the project is to identify which of the elaborated water management scenarios is the most probable in terms of the future development of the Aydar-Arnasay lakes system.

The future development of the lakes system implies such important aspects as features of hydrological regime, including level of mineralization; maintenance of fisheries situated in these lakes, conservation of biodiversity, i.e. wetlands of international importance designated as a Ramsar site and various birds and fish species inhabiting these lakes.

People whose livelihoods chiefly involve the direct exploitation of local natural resources often come into conflict with the institutions of protected areas, which are dedicated to natural resource conservation or preservation. Many scholars and managers now question the traditional top-down approach of excluding local participation and ignoring local interests in protected areas establishment and management.

In the framework of the Artists-in-Residence project that is new at Hungarian universities, but well known in the United States, the Center for Arts and Culture of CEU is glad to host a quartet of young Hungarian musicians: Zoltán Fejérvári (piano), János Palojtay (piano), Péter Tornyai (violin/viola) and Tamás Zétényi (cello) who will contribute to our community with regular chamber music concerts in the academic year 2011-2012. The aim of the Classicus et Universus Ensemble is to focus on classical and contemporary music of Central Europe and the United States, promoting a creative cultural exchange between students, staff and faculty of CEU and local community.

The project aimed at assessing commonly used policy instruments (for example building codes, energy efficiency obligations, subsidies or information campaigns) for reducing greenhouse gas emissions from buildings according to their emission reduction effectiveness and cost-effectiveness as well as factors for success. The assessment was based on case studies of implemented policy instruments from over 50 countries. As second part of the project, an online Quick Scan Tool has been developed to assist decision makers on various levels of government in creating policy packages most appropriate to their local context, which consist of the assessed policy instruments.

In the midst of escalating development in the area, Athabascan communities are also developing a Land Use Plan which they hope will streamline activities in the area, and ensure sustainable livelihoods well into the future. We have been asked to comment on the draft of this document, which will be developed further in 2009.

The subject of the proposed research is the social mechanisms of justifying and maintaining the communist dictatorships in Central Europe. The purpose, however, is not to merely pursue the tradition of looking for the social reasons for supporting the one-party regimes or the practices of adaptation to the new circumstances.

This research project has been commissioned by the Hungarian Ministry of Environment and Water Protection with the aim of preparing a background study for the long-term climate change strategy of Hungary.

The project constructs and finalizes energy and GHG emission scenarios that estimate the contribution the building sector can make to ambitious climate change mitigation goals. The scenarios focus on heating, cooling and hot water. The scenarios are based on the CEU 3CSEP’s earlier building energy scenario work for the IPCC, the Global Energy Assessment and the UNEP SBCI.

The Bioethical and Legal Research Database has started as a joint initiative of the Central European University (CEU) and the Public Understanding of Genetics in Europe (PUG) research project, financed by the European Commission Fifth framework Programme: Quality of Life and Management of Living Resources, and having Prof. Judit Sándor as principal investigator representing CEU.

The goal of CEPL's efforts in this area is to facilitate and strengthen civil society and the quality of life in the region of Lake Ohrid in Albania and Macedonia through research on, and initiation and activation of a multi-ethnic, transboundary civic action network for the implementation of sustainable development called, The Prespa and Ohrid Sustainability Network (POSNET).

The research aims to assist the evidence-based design of the most cost-effective new policies targeted at CO2 emission reductions in the Hungarian commercial and public building sector. The project goal was to estimate and to analyze CO2 mitigation potentials in the tertiary sector and associated costs resulting from the application of energy-efficient technologies and practices as well as the use of fuel switch options from the demand side. In addition, the study identifies the most promising options in terms of cost-effectiveness and CO2 reduction potential.

At the core of human existence, the bio-archaeological heritage in the form of historical human remains can be considered a repository of knowledge about the ways people interact with both the natural and social constructed world. Thus, the dead make their presence felt in a variety of academic, religious, ethical and social contexts all of which have their justifications and contradictions. Human bodies and how they were treated during life and after death are source material for physical anthropology and a challenge for scholars and the societies they operate in. Physical anthropological research and policies toward bio-archaeological heritage have themselves a variety of social and religious implications. Information gleaned about the human condition from our dead ancestors must be weighed against serious non academic factors in a changing world. Modern concepts of respect for the dead impact the research practices of scholars and the management of heritage institutions.
Despite this, a critical over-review of physical anthropology has never been attempted, especially in light of more recent developments in the field (such as DNA and heavy isotope sampling). The impact of such results on long-held traditional historical interpretations is also a major issue. When such biological data is rigorously interpreted within its cultural-historical context it can be at the expense of dear and long-held beliefs. The proposed interdisciplinary research project wants to confront the policy and heritage issues arising when the search for knowledge sits uncomfortably with what society regards as right and good. The project is based on a network of physical anthropologists, bio-ethic experts, scholars of religious studies and heritage specialist and aims at collecting academic research results, policy protocols, legal regulations, research protocols and guidelines as a repository for working out best-practice reference materials.

The project is funded by the Higher Education Support Program of the Open Society Institute, Budapest and administered by the help of CEU’s Special Projects Office. This is a three-year project to develop Comparative History as a stream/grouping of courses within a set of target departments in our Region – Central Europe, South East Europe, Eastern Europe --, with CEU acting as the core and the co-ordinator of the group.

Contextualising behavioural change in energy programmes involving intermediaries and policymaking organizations working towards CHANGING BEHAVIOUR

The "Agenda for Civil Society in Southeast Europe" was a three-year long research project, surrealistically nicknamed Blue Bird, started with the assumption that the invention of the region requires the construction of a common regional vision and the emergence of a regional public debate. The Blue Bird was an attempt to formulate such a vision and to assist the emergence of civic regional debate in Southeast Europe. The project’s primary ambition was to reflect on the reconstruction of Southeast Europe, both as an intellectual challenge and a policy challenge. The current debate has never addressed the production of knowledge and innovative ideas about the region as a distinctive problem. The international community fails to recognize the lack of local knowledge as a specific and powerful obstacle for the region’s development. This is one of the reasons why the academic community and the intellectual community in general remained marginal in the initial stages of debate about what to do in the Balkans.

CELAB has started this research project in 2005/2006 AY and continued during 2006/2007 AY. In March 2007 CELAB organized a workshop on this topic (see CELAB events).

Research objectives were to analyze the dominant ethical arguments and principles governing the regulation of stem cell research; to compare the European and US approaches on stem cell research; to compare the interconnections between regulation of reproductive cloning and stem cell research; to analyze public debates on reproductive cloning and stem cell in a number of EU Member States. This monitoring is based on a continuous analysis of relevant laws and decisions on this topic, these documents are reviewed permanently for the bio-law database of CELAB. The laws and regulations in this field of study are changing very rapidly, therefore no legal and ethical research on this topic can be conducted without having a clear view of the continuously changing legislative landscape; and without investigating the arguments of different stakeholders of stem cell research.

Research methodology:
-monitoring biomedical norms (ethical and legal) on the territory of the European Union and the Council of Europe in the field of reproductive cloning and stem cell research
-analysis of ethical and legal principles in the field of the study within the European Union and within the Council of Europe
-comparative analysis of laws, legislative proposals, reports and cases decided by European courts

Beliefs and attitudes of local people toward protected areas are increasingly being considered in conservation planning. Although park-people studies abound, relatively little is known about these relationships in Central and Eastern Europe. Romania’s protected area management system currently involves considering aspirations of local communities.

CReating Innovative Sustainability Pathways seeks to identify potential pathways that will aid the EU towards the transition to a sustainable, low carbon Europe. We are funded by FP7, the European Union Framework 7 research programme and are a team of partners from Greece, Hungary, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Norway and UK.To meet this challenge, CRISP reviews current policies and practical case studies to figure out where we are at the moment. We then plan to develop and evaluate alternative scenarios for the future so that we than can hopefully find ways in which we can bridge the gap between where we are today, and where specifically we want to be in the future.

Green Investment Schemes (GIS) is an architecture which helps to utilize greenhouse gas emission surpluses tradable under International Emission Trading for sustainable energy development. The project aims to assist Hungarian policy-makers with analysis of various options of efficient use of Green Investment Scheme funding.

Center for Ethics and Law in Biomedicine (CELAB) received a UNESCO grant for developing models for implementation of UNESCO Bioethical Instruments. With this project, CELAB sought to contribute to the increasing international awareness of the existence of these UNESCO declarations. We believe that reflections on and interpretations of these documents should be an integral part of ethics education, policymaking, national legislation and international research and that translating these documents into the official languages of the Member States is one of the best ways to spread the idea of bioethical thinking and disseminate the results of policy-making at UNESCO.

EUROSPHERE is a European Commission-funded Integrated Project within the 6th Framework Programme. The EUROSPHERE Consortium comprises 17 European universities and research institutes and approximately 150 researchers will be working in the project's different parts and phases. The project is coordinated by the University of Bergen. The overall objective of EUROSPHERE is to develop innovative perspectives on the European Public Sphere and to identify the factors which facilitate or hinder the articulation of a European Public Sphere. The research plan comprises synchronized data collection and analysis activities in 16 countries as well as creation of a Eurosphere Knowledge Base.</p>

Events since 1991 have led to social dislocation with decidedly negative consequences for the region's children in social, economic and educational terms. As a result of instability across the region, children often have serious gaps in their learning and skills that follow them into adulthood. Such children often have difficulty integrating, leading to further exclusion both in the classroom and in wider society.
Civil society organizations in the region warn that the growing numbers of under- or uneducated and vulnerable children contributes in turn to increasing levels of poverty, decreasing social cohesion and further declines in socio-economic development. Such a situation clearly poses a threat to the immediate and long-term prospects of building free, open societies in the region.
The Open Society Institute's Education Support Program and the Interkulturelles Zentrum Austria, in partnership with the Austrian Federal Ministry of Education, Culture and the Arts, and Soros foundations in the South Caucasus, are jointly carrying out the Education Cooperation across the Caucasus initiative, which will fund local and cross-regional projects in the North and South Caucasus.
The purpose of the initiative is twofold: to promote identified national priorities for education change, and to explore the potential for cooperation and mutual learning between countries and communities in the Caucasus. In line with ESP mission, the initiative aims to serve education justice, which places priority on access to quality education for excluded and vulnerable children, making this the key indicator for effectiveness and success within the education system. Education Cooperation across the Caucasus will accomplish these goals by creating opportunities for education professionals to better address their common challenges. In 2008-09 ESP has funded 12 projects that focus on the specific priorities identified by governments in each country and which, with support from the international community, could be replicated or scaled up by local and national governments.

NEUJOBS is a research project financed by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Program. It's objective is to analyze likely future developments in the European labor market(s), in view of four major transitions that will impact employment and European societies in general.

The goal of the research project is to gauge the net employment impacts of a large-scale, deep building energy-efficiency renovation program in Poland, in the understanding that the low employment rate of the Polish economy makes this a key entry point for decision-making. Therefore, employment impacts strongly correlate with the dynamics of the investments flowing towards building energy retrofits. The study was commissioned by the European Climate Foundation.

The project analyzed energy efficiency governance worldwide. This included institutions and the types of resources available at all levels of government which work to improve energy efficiency. 3CSEP covered the Eastern European and ex-USSR region within this global project on behalf of the International Energy Agency (IEA).

In the former USSR environmental protection was understood as a set of engineering measures; interests and expertise of stakeholder groups were often ignored. As a result, even the best engineered solutions led to unexpected socio-economic problems. This attitude also drove the development of environmental sciences and professional training. Issues of environmental policy (or rather environmental governance) are still considered unimportant in many universities in Belarus, Russia and Ukraine, or their presence in curricula is formal. This, and weak integration in international research communities often lead to a situation when in new curricula novel developments are limited to adjusted terminology and new approaches of engineering nature. As a result, environmental graduates with robust natural science or engineering education have difficulties with identifying environmental problems and suggesting balanced solutions / translating them into sound policies. A related problem is that environmental practitioners and educators do not cooperate; this affects the quality of training and employability of graduates. Evaluation and self-evaluation tools are also far from operational.

To address this, we propose (1) to revise BSc courses in environmental sciences in partner universities, upgrading them in general and introducing environmental governance context; (2) to set up at partner universities joint MSc and PhD programs in Environmental Governance, (3) to create a set of textbooks covering multidisciplinary issues of environmental studies, especially emerging and rapidly developing fields, (4) to set-up national permanent seminars of environmental educators and employers and a web-portal, (5) to introduce new mechanisms of evaluation and self-evaluation. Points (2) and (3) include development of curricula and syllabuses, re/training of teachers and short mobility periods for faculty and students, especially in support to international network-building.

July 8-19, 2002, our Department is offering a course on Environment and Regional Transport Planning organized in co-operation with the Regional Environmental Center for CEE (REC) Secretariat to the Sofia Initiative on Environmental Impact Assessment.

Synthesizing research to further knowledge about modes of governance to promote environmental policy integration (EPI). (2006-2008).

[img:2:small:left]The EPHR project will carry out a comprehensive review of privacy law across all EU Member states which in itself is a substantial task, but further to this, the EPHR project will deliver the results of this study in a number of innovative and interactive ways with the aim of increasing awareness of privacy rights across the European region and helping to empower all citizens to take control of their own privacy in this technologically complex age.

The topic of the research was data protection legislation and case-law of eight countries. In order to receive the required information a questionnaire was prepared, which focused both on the issue of data collection and on minority discrimination.

The EU Disability Discrimination project aimed to build a framework for the implementation of the disability aspects of the EU Directive for Equal Treatment in Employment and Occupation (EU Directive 2000/78/EC) through the development and delivery of training programs for NGOs in Bulgaria, Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania and Romania.

The project analyzes the correlation between the cultural history of Europe and the history of music theatre from the 18th to the late 20th century.

The project on living organ donation in Europe is a coordination action that aims to establish an inventory of living donation practices in Europe; to explore and promote living donation as a way to increase organ availability and to develop tools that improve the quality and safety of living organ donations in Europe. This action aims to achieve broad European coverage with a specific focus on new EU Member States. It draws upon the support, knowledge and network of the European Platform on Ethical, Legal and Psychosocial Aspects of Organ Transplantation (ELPAT) and the European Society for Organ Transplantation (ESOT).

The workshop series (sponsored by the Economic and Social Research Council) concentrates on the impact of EU enlargement on the political, social and economic agenda of the EU. More specifically, it analyses the effects that enlargement has on the pan-European discussion regarding the Single Market policy framework and the concept of a European Social Model. Events held in the framework of the project focus on the contribution of Central and Eastern European countries, in defining priorities of Single Market Reform and socio-economic development in the EU.

The EuroWhiteCert project supports the conceptual and technical development of tradable white certificates systems covering energy savings and energy efficiency.

As part of a consultancy project funded by the EC’s Directorate-General for Agriculture and Rural Development, CPS took part in an ex-post evaluation of the LEADER+ program 2000-06.

Contextual inquiry to the UNDP/World Bank/EC Regional Roma Survey 2011, focusing on Hungary, Romania, Serbia. A joint initiative of the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Open Society Foundation's Roma Initiatives Office (RIO), the OSF Making the Most of EU Funds for Roma (MtM) program (support pending), and the Central European University/Center for Policy Studies (CEU CPS).

The basic goal of this project was to test the feasibility of introducing a system of consular cooperation among four Visegrad states on the territory of the Ukraine and the Republic of Moldova in order to reduce the distance and time needed for obtaining visas.

The project examines “Financial Market Integration, Foreign Direct Investment, Structural Change and Economic Growth in the EU25.”

The aim of the GARNET project was to develop a multi-disciplinary network of scientific excellence of researchers, analysts and practitioners with expertise in key issues and themes in global and regional governance.

[img:1:thumb:left]The Global Energy Assessment (GEA) is a major initiative established by IIASA in late 2005 to help decision makers address the challenges of providing energy services for sustainable development, whilst ameliorating existing and emerging threats associated with: security of supply; access to modern forms of energy for development and poverty alleviation; local, regional and global environmental impacts; and securing sufficient investment.

In collaboration with the United Nations Environmental Program (UNEP)

The aim of this project is to launch a Eurasia-wide e-School in order to promote excellence in teaching in the field of Korean Studies and thereby support the development of a world-class innovative curriculum, with a particular focus on the social sciences. To do so Central European University (Budapest, Hungary), proposes to become the hub in the network of leading higher education institutions in Western and Central-Eastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Middle East. The project brings together 12 institutions located in 10 countries.