A coalition of Penn professors directed by Russian and East European Studies professor Mitchell Orenstein recently launched a new European Studies Institute at the University.
The Institute, which was started last year by a grant from Penn Global, is a student-centered research institute for European studies that helps to prepare the next generation of field experts. According to Orenstein, the institute's next goal is to grow “into a full-fledged area center."
“It’s so exciting, for those of us who do focus on European Studies and have always thought it was super important to train students and to advance research in Europe, that now we’re finally launching this at Penn,” Orenstein said to The Daily Pennsylvanian. “It’s definitely the right time for the center. I think it’s something that if we don’t work out at Penn, we’re not really doing a service for our students.”
According to the European Studies Institute’s website, "ESI also organizes the European Studies Minor at Penn, promotes study abroad in Europe, and supports learning about the institutions of the European Union in their historical and cultural contexts.”
Currently, ESI is comprised of seven student researchers, with Orenstein as their advisor. It additionally has an advisory council that consists of faculty from across disciplines and Penn's schools.
“We’re entering a very new and strange world,” College senior Henry McDaniel, who is affiliated with the institute, said to the DP. “With the war in Ukraine, we’ve really seen Europe drawn into the focus of geopolitics in an unprecedented way. We’re also, as Americans, facing a crossroads about what our role in Europe should be and there are serious deliberations and debates going on about that right now.”
Student research in the institute, designated for Penn seniors writing their theses, is largely focused on how the war in Ukraine has affected Europe or geopolitics as a whole. The current student research subjects range from studying energy systems in Ukraine to the relationship that private companies have to business in Russia.
To assist them with their research, ESI worked with affiliated students to send them to locations across Europe, including London, Paris, Berlin, and Brussels.
“I was speaking with Polish citizens about their changing public opinion on Ukrainian refugees and it was an incredible opportunity to be able to do hands-on research,” College senior Autumn Cortwright told the DP. “I was also at NATO and we were meeting with a senior security official and he said to us, ‘Whatever you think that you knew about the world order post-Cold War, to forget it because we’re in a new era that’s completely uncharted and anything could happen.’”
Members of the Institute believe that Europe has become increasingly more relevant.
“Given the present state of geopolitical affairs and the relations between the U.S. and many European countries, I think it’s useful for the [University] to kind of up the ante in thinking about what Europe means to us right now,” Annenberg School of Communication professor Barbie Zelizer said to The DP.
Zelizer went on to explain that while the Institute has a great emphasis on geopolitical student research, the newly revitalized European studies minor is applicable to a diverse range of academic disciplines.
“If you study English and you’re focusing specifically on European literature, you can actually get credit for the minor,” she added.
The Institute's launch comes a year after Penn relaunched the European studies minor. Located in the Political Science department, the minor is six credits and includes one core course, one European history course, two non-English language courses, and two European electives.
The minor was relaunched with the aim of “looking at how to build European studies” at Penn, Orenstein said.
According to the minor's official website, the European studies minor allows students to “learn about the European Union, the world’s second-largest economy and a unique experiment in peacemaking and regional governance.”
“The minor offers students an opportunity to specialize in an area of international relations and European-U.S. relations that is changing as we speak in ways that are very hard to predict," Zelizer added. “The ability to think about Europe puts students potentially right in the direction of what’s going to be crucial to current affairs as we move down the line.”
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