DEFINING CENTRAL EUROPE FROM HISTORICAL AND POLICY PERSPECTIVE

The main focus of the project is the promotion of the Visegrad Cooperation through the creation of a comprehensive textbook for universities. The textbook shall be used as teaching material in the V4 countries, our European partner states, and external partners (USA, Turkey, China) in four different languages. (English, Hungarian, Turkish and Chinese).

Currently, educational programs in the V4 region, the EU, and in the strategic partners, the US, Turkey and China, lack courses focusing primarily on the Visegrad Group. The former handbooks related to international studies and Central European politics are outdated and offer perspective different from showing the importance of V4 Group as a sub-regional cooperation format.

Our project involves think-tanks from the Visegrad Group states and universities in order to create and disseminate teaching material on the subject in our region and beyond, for example in the United States, Turkey and China. Once the book is published, the project helps to propagate the results and to promote the textbook among university students and lecturers and researchers as much as possible.

Although there are several books dealing with the history of Central European history and politics from their own national perspectives in Slovak, Czech, Hungarian and Polish languages, there is no comprehensive work in English, which involves authors from every V4 country.  A regional project could raise the attention of our important external partners (EU, US, China, Turkey) to the importance of Central Europe and fills the education niche in the field of V4 studies.

Based on our long-standing partnership with SFPA, Europeum, and Casimir Pulaski Foundation, we cooperate with non-V4 institutions like the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Istanbul Sehir University and Center for European Policy Analysis.

We translate the book into Hungarian, Turkish and Chinese and promote it among universities in Budapest, Peking and Istanbul. Our marketing department has several ways to raise attention to the project in traditional (national dailies, TV channels etc.) and non-traditional media outlets (social media platform). In case of high level of sales, we plan to publish a 2nd edition of the book after 2019 and provide support for building university course development based on the textbook.

Availability:

The book called “Central Europe and the Visegrad Cooperation: Historical and Policy Perspectives” is available at book stores and through delivery ordered online from the Antall József Knowledge Centre.

Events and book launches:

• Roundtable discussion on the future of Visegrad cooperation at the Warsaw Security Forum 27-28 October 2018.
• Book launch at the Permanent Representation of Hungary to the European Union in Brussels on 21 February 2019.
• Book launch at the Hungarian Embassy in Prague on 7 March 2019.
• Book launch at the Hungarian Institute in Bratislava in March 2019.
• Roundtable discussion at the Heritage Foundation in Washington DC in May 2019.
• Online roundtable discussion with Turkey-based partners in October 2020.

The projects is supported by the International Visegrad Fund  www.visegradfund.org

Our partners:

• SFPA  www.sfpa.sk/en/

• EUROPEUM  www.europeum.org

• Casimir Pulaski Foundation  pulaski.pl/en/