For the seventh consecutive year, CCGES is offering faculty members from across Canada the opportunity to participate in a two-day seminar on contemporary Germany entitled “Germany in Europe – Europe in Germany.” The seminar has the function of informing scholars of Germany and Europe about the latest developments in the German society, to provide them with analytical and empirical insights, and to offer networking possibilities for the participants.

The seminar will be taught by Centre-affiiated faculty members from Canada and Germany. Date and location are: February 2-3, 2007 (Friday and Saturday) here at our Centre offices at York University.

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Treaties of Rome and the ongoing debates about the future of the European Union, the 2007 Fortbildungsseminar will discuss Germany’s role in the process of European integration and the Europeanization of German politics and society in historical, present-day and future perspectives.

Prof. Marcus Funck, DAAD Visiting Professor of History at York, is overseeing this year’s seminar. In addition to Prof. Funck, Prof. Markus Reisenleitner from York’s Division of Humanities and Prof. Stefan Gänzle, a DAAD Visiting Professor of Political Science at the University of British Columbia, will be taking on the role of session leaders as well.

York students with an interest in and/or background in EU studies are encouraged to attend an informational meeting on the EU Study Tour with Dr. Alexandre Berlin, Honorary Director of the European Commission on Wednesday, January 31st at 2:30 pm.

The EU Study Tour is a three-week trip taking participants to the major institutions of the European Union in Brussels, Strasbourg, Luxemburg, and Frankfurt. This year’s tour will run from May 6 – May 25 2007 at a cost of $ 2,500 including accomodations and local transport. Financial support for transatlantic airfare is available through York International while arrangements can be made for tour participants to receive academic credit (directed reading) in Political Science / Arts. In addition, participants can apply for a limited number of post-Tour internships with European institutions.

Please consult the Tour website for further information: http://www.capcollege.bc.ca/programs/europe/Home.html

Interested students should attend the upcoming information session:

On Wednesday, January 31, 2007 at 2:30, Behavioral Sciences Building Room 163

Please note: Dr. Berlin will be giving a guest lecture in the POLS 4515 ’European Union’ seminar before the presentation on the EU Study Tour. His lecture will begin at 2:30 pm with the information session to follow afterwards.

For more information on this event, please contact:

Professor Burkard Eberlein, SSB and The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies, beberlein@schulich.yorku.ca

Dr. Glenn Goshulak, Instructor PolSci 4515 European Union, Department of Political Science, ggosh@yorku.ca

The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies is pleased to announce the lecture series “Germany in the World: The Nation Transcended in the Age of Globalization”. Prof. Heiner Ganßmann, one of Germany’s foremost economic sociologists, will kick off the series at the Centre’s York Lanes office on Monday, January 15, 2007 with a talk entitled “The German Welfare State in the Age of Globalization”.

While the debate about the effects of globalization on welfare states has been particularly heated in Germany, Prof. Ganßmann contends that, in Germany’s case, this is misguided as many of the problems facing that country’s welfare state are the result of German reunification, not globalization. This emphasis on the globalization discourse in Germany (along with the ageing discourse), he argues, is shifting attention away from the real problems facing the German welfare state.

The “Germany in the World” lecture series will run through the 2007-08 academic year and is intended to offer a platform to North American and European experts from a variety of academic fields (including economics, political science, history, urban and cultural studies and sociology) to contribute to the ongoing discussions regarding transnationalism and globalization by presenting their current research, most of which, but not all, is related to Germany.

Time: 2:00 – 3:30 pm
Location: 230R York Lanes

Please RSVP to ccges@yorku.ca

As part of The Canada-EU Bridge Project, a CCGES research initiative examining the state of academic mobility between post-secondary institutions in Canada and the European Union member states, CCGES will be hosting a workshop to consider the effects of the Bologna Process on academic exchange. This event will bring together academics, high-ranking university administrators and government representatives with responsibility for implementing a “mobility agenda” to discuss various aspects of this subject.

Funding for The Canada-EU Bridge Project has been provided by the European Commission Delegation to Canada’s program ’Public Diplomacy, Policy Research and Outreach Devoted to the European Union and EU-Canada Relations’.

During this talk Jens Wissel, a Research Fellow at the Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt/Main, will introduce his current research project examining the transformation of the modern nation state in the context of globalization with a particular focus on Europeanization as a regional answer to and motor of this process.

Wissel’s research looks specifically at the changes to EU migration control policy since the partial shift of responsibility for this area to the EU level with 1997’s Amsterdam Treaty. Arguing from a materialist standpoint, he proposes that the national territorial state neither disappears nor survives in an unmodified way in the globalized world, but rather becomes part of a novel configuration of the political which distributes political regulation to a multiple spaces.

Jens Wissel is spending the fall term 2006 at CCGES and York’s Department of Political Science as a Visiting Researcher traveling with the support of the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Time: 12:30 – 2:00 pm
Location: 230R York Lanes

Please RSVP to ccges@yorku.ca