Our Activities

UC Modules are the intellectual heart of the UC and the gateway to our community. Our modules are multi-day training programmes for 10-12 UC Student Fellows, together with one or two visiting faculty members to pursue inter-regional and inter-generational teaching, learning, and research. Our students participate in short courses and seminars that tackle difficult issues dividing Russia, Europe and the US. Without exception, each module strives to represent a wide variety of voices, breeding trust and mutual respect.

The point of the module is not only to immerse UC Fellows in the intellectual culture of the host institution’s country, stimulating him/her to investigate and understand other perspectives from direct or primary sources. Equally important, we aim to socialise our inter-regional cohort of Fellows with one another and build relationships that will last. We offer two modules per year, one in the fall/winter and one in the spring/summer and advertise them via our local UC Principals at our core and partner institutions.

Once a year the UC organizes a conference which provides important opportunities for exposure, immersion, and dialogue among scholars, experts, officials and students.

The UC invites scholars, think-tank experts and officials (former and current) to discuss current trends and problems in Russia-West relations and identify potential policy prescriptions. Groups of UC Fellows are invited to the UC’s Annual Conference and are encouraged to network and participate actively in all conference discussions. Our conferences provide fresh opportunities for multilateral thinking about old problems and highlight the intellectual and affective benefits of inter-regional, inter-national and inter-generational discussions. Not least, these senior-driven meetings set the example for constructive, but honest, dialogue for the younger generations in the audience.

As the situation in Russia-Western relations worsens, the UC becomes an increasingly important platform for such meetings and conversations even for our senior network members.

Encouraged by the success of our digital activities in 2020/2021, the UC will continue to embrace digital formats. The global pandemic-induced “online shift” forced the rest of the world to become familiar with the online tools that enabled the UC to continue, despite travel bans. The online environment conforms well to the UC’s geographically scattered community, since bringing our members together physically can be both financially and logistically challenging. Normalizing online events helped the UC hold more frequent gatherings, bringing together young Fellows, senior experts, and former officials, and giving rise to our most recent program innovations without the need to physically gather our members together.

In the centre of our virtual efforts stand Corona Conversations, a series of three discussions per year tied together by a broad common theme. Each Corona Conversation hosts three experts representing our regions who unpack the narratives and perspectives of their respective countries on a common issue.

After its successful launch in 2021, the UC Alumni Network (AN) has become an important part of our activities and an indispensable means of maintaining and deepening our impact on UC Fellows.  Building on the momentum and deepening the knowledge generated during UC Modules, Annual Conferences and other events, the UC Alumni Network is the communal UC home for our Fellows once they have attended a UC module or conference.

The Alumni Network is a community made up of UC Fellows that provides professional, intellectual, and social benefits to both the Fellows and to the UC network as a whole. Run by UC Fellows selected to act as Alumni Officers in partnership with the UC Team, the Alumni Network organizes its own events, puts people in touch with one another, and keeps the momentum going between our modules and annual conferences. Strengthening connections within the UC, the Alumni Network acts like the glue binding our Fellows together into a more cohesive community and ensures that new members who join rapidly feel themselves to be a part of ‘our’ consortium. 

The UC’s Research Grants Programme awards up to six grants of $1,000 each to UC Fellows every year. The goal of the scheme is to support UC Fellows at critical points in their careers and boost their development. We support research needed for their final theses; we help with the publication of their existing work; or we sponsor field-trips necessary for research projects of aspiring young academics. The UC encourages applicants to embrace UC norms and values in their research so that their outputs might contribute to the UC’s long-term goals and priorities.

There are two month-long application periods every year, the first beginning on 1 March and concluding on 1 April, and the second beginning on 1 September and concluding on 1 October. Application periods will be advertised via the UC’s social media and by e-mail. Winning applicants will be selected, contacted, and then announced in the beginning of April and October each year.