APPEAR: Development and Cooperation in Higher Education and Research
In 2011, the Centre for Development Studies (CDS) at Birzeit University, West Bank, and the Department of Development Studies (DDS) at the University of Vienna successfully submitted the three-year research project Conflict, Participation, and Development in Palestine to the newly established programme APPEAR. Funded by the Austrian Development Cooperation APPEAR supports partnerships between higher education institutions in Austria and key regions of the Austrian Development Cooperation. Its thematic focus ranges from poverty reduction, rural development, peace building and conflict prevention to higher education and research for development.
Main components of our three-year consortium project, launched in August 2011, are as follows:
• Implementing an MA programme in development studies at the CDS.
• Building up participatory research methods among 150 CDS fieldworkers.
• Establishing and institutionalizing an academic exchange programme between Birzeit University and DDS scholars.
• Institutionalizing a thematic (conflict and development) research cluster at the DDS to analyze and theorize societal developments in the global South, of which Palestine will constitute one of several areas for study.
The following topics are addressed in more detail during the workshop:
• Possibilities and limits of academic partnerships between institutions in the South and North generally and the CDS and the DDS specifically.
• Critical reflections on the determination of what may or may not constitutes ‘development’ in Palestine.
The workshop will be held in English. Speakers and their respective topics are:
• Linda Tabar (CDS, Birzeit University): Rethinking Development in a Colonial Context: The Challenge of Solidarity
• Helmut Krieger (DDS, University of Vienna): The Global South in the North? – Some Reflections on the Partnership Program APPEAR