5 July, 2024
In connection with the ongoing EUPECCOM project, David Palatinus gave a talk that focused on imaginaries of the future of democracy in the Anthropocene at the 24th Conference of the Utopian Studies Society/Europe, entitled UTOPIA AND DEMOCRACY, held at Democracy Institute of the Central European University (3-5 July, 2024).
25 June, 2024
As part of the ongoing EUPECCOM project, David Palatinus gave a talk about the ways in which the intricate relations between climate, conflict and migration are addressed in contemporary television dramas at this year’s Critical Studies in Television Conference. Watch the entire panel at this link (David’s talk begins at 30:40).
June 17, 2024
On June 17, 2024 we had our quality assurance advisory board meeting to carry out a comprehensive evaluation of the activities of the first project year. The QA meeting attended by the vice-dean for education, Erasmus+ coordinator and a student focused on how to make activities of the project more visible, how to improve the project website and engage students within the project courses. This QA meeting was followed by a meeting with the vice-dean for education focusing specifically on the teaching component of the project (courses, their format, evaluation etc.).
May 24, 2024
The 32nd International Philosophical Olympiad (IPO) took place in Helsinki, Finland, from 16 to 19 May 2024, with students and teachers from more than 50 countries. The first two students from the Slovak round, Marina Rembovská and Miroslava Baricova from the Gymnasium Jura Hronec in Bratislava, participated at this event representing Slovakia. Slovak teachers were represented by Ján Hrkút and Ivan Koniar from our Department of Philosophy, who also participated in the evaluation of the works as members of the international committee of teachers. According to the jury’s evaluation, the two best papers were written by students from China and Germany. The essay by the Slovak student Miroslava Baricova was awarded an Honorary Mention. Congratulations to Miroslava and a big thank you goes to both students for representing Slovakia.
April 18, 2024
Within our project, we plan to organize each year at least one public event (a lecture or a discussion) on one of the topics of our project. During the first year, we welcomed a conservationist Marian Jasik who told us more about national parks and their protection. We are glad this event attracted not only our students and colleagues but also wider public. More information about this discussion is available here.
We are orginizing the first public event of our EUPECCOM project. All students, colleagues and wider public is invited to attend a discussion between Daniel Dite and our main guest Marian Jasik to discuss the challenges facing our national parks. Marian Jasik is working for environmental and protection NGOs and in the past, he was in charge of various protection agencies in Slovakia and also a director of an institution overseeing one of our greatest national parks Low Tatras. The event will take place on April 18, 2024, 10am in „výstavná sieň“ of rector’s office.
March 18, 2024
On March 18, 2024 we held our second meeting to discuss the plans and progress made within our project. We talked about the IPO (international philosophy Olympiad), the courses offered this term (The Big Questions of Europe and Climate-Conflict-Migration: European Media Contexts) and our planned public talk/discussion. Iveta Kloptova is preparing this event in April and she is going to invite two interesting guests from the area of nature protection. The main topic should be national parks. This planned public discussion should, therefore, cover “climate” part of our project title.
In addition, during our meeting we shared ideas regarding evaluation of our project activities and their promotion.
February 23, 2024
Our spring teaching term started this week. During this term, we are offering two courses, which are part of our EUPECCOM project. The first course Climate-Conflict-Migration: European Media Contexts is taught by David Palatinus mainly for English and American Studies students. The second course on the Big Questions of Europe is supervised by Eugen Zelenak, but individual talks will be given by various faculty from the department of philosophy. During the first week 25 students, mainly students of English and psychology, attended the first classes of these two courses. It is still possible to sign up for them during the second week.
January 31, 2024
On January 23, 2024, we welcomed 19 high school students, who qualified from the first round of the philosophy Olympiad, for the second round of the competition. First, we congratulated to three winners of the first round and then all the students started to write philosophical essays, this time in English. Winners of the second round will qualify for the final round of the International Philosophy Olympiad, which will take place in Helsinki in May 2024.
January 22, 2024
The first course ‘War on Terror across media’ of our project successfully wrapped in the middle of December 2023. The course covered both theoretical framings as well as practical, real-life examples of representations and mediations of violence, hostility, conflict, terrorism, notions of the territory and the border, instances of cultural clashes, and practices of social exclusion and inclusion. The cultural diversity of the class greatly contributed to a multiplicity of perspectives and views on conceptualizations of systemic as well as subjective forms of violence, on the role of media, and, finally, on forms of activism. The course serves as a foundation for ‘Climate-Conflict-Migration’, running in the Spring term of 2024. More information.
November 14, 2023
On November 14, 2023 our faculty welcomed 169 high-school students for the first round (happening in Slovak language) of the philosophy Olympiad.
From the academic year 2015/2016 Jan Hrkut from the department of philosophy with his team organizes Slovak rounds of the International Philosophy Olympiad. This year, this event was a part of the EUPECCOM project which means students wrote their philosophical essays on the European topics.
The winners of the first round and 20 best philosophical essays were announced in the middle of December. Students who wrote them will come to Ruzomberok again for the qualifying round to write their philosophical essays in English to qualify for the international event in 2024.
September 18, 2023
We have started our EUPECCOM project. The grant agreement was signed. This is the first week of our teaching term and besides various preparation activities, our project starts with the first course on War-on-Terror across Media taught by David Palatinus.
Photo by Jeff Kingma on Unsplash
September 11, 2023
On July 6, 2023 the EACEA informed us that after evaluation phase, our EUPECCOM project was selected and we were invited to start the grant agreement preparation.
On Tuesday September 5, 2023 we had the first meeting of the team of the project to discuss the plan for the EUPECCOM project implementation. We discussed the planned courses, key activities such the philosophical Olympiad etc. Also, we considered the management of the project as well as the structure of the project website.
This was the first meeting of the team before the planned start of the project on September 18, 2023. The project will start with teaching of the first planned course (War-on-Terror across Media: the New Bestialisation of Human) and all the other activities will follow after that in the coming months.
