Curriculum and courses

Lately it seems that I won't be that able to update weekly this blog, but I'll try my best! Now I've finally settled down in Rovaniemi, where I will help researching on the Arctic Council. One week has past brainstorming on the topic, and from tomorrow we'll discuss the first findings and next steps.

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What could I tell about CBU this time? I'll describe shortly our study plan and courses, so that, after the "boring" educational part, I'll move next time to Students' life in Tampere!

In our curriculum there are several compulsory courses which comprehend IR Theories, European and Russian Media, Introduction to Russian Studies and Russian Language. Together they form circa 20ECTS, plus the MA Thesis seminars, methodology courses and thesis itself almost 3/4 of the curriculum is covered. For the rest 20/25 or more we can choose between many courses related with IR and Russia and most of them are actually part of the CBU school we have in the participants universities. Some titles are "Politics of Putinism", "Foreign Policy Analysis", "EU-Russian relations. Interpreting Conflict" etc. (you can find more information from the CBU website).

Moreover, what I find very appealing, especially about Tampere University, is that every student can actually choose freely also many other courses from the other faculties, which may interest them. Thanks to this "freedom of study" I took more courses of Russian Language, and other colleagues took also some economics and law courses. All the successfully passed exams will be registered in the academic transcript as part of the degree.

Most of the exams are either book exams or essays, which force you to study actively the subject. Book exams make you reading the essential Books of the subjects which usually no-one would open voluntarily and the essays need to have a sound bibliography behind. This is what I mean with active studying: reading and elaborate by yourself the subject, and not just relying on what the professor said during the lessons. Some course entails also seminars or some oral presentation, where, in a lapse of several week or even some days, we have to present a research topic or essay concerning the course.

All this require a good command of both spoken and written English, but that is a mastery which will come also with the continuous exercise.

So far for the curriculum in general, next time Student's Life in Tampere :)

Thesis seminars - The long, hard way to the real social research!

Intense week. This Monday we had the last Thesis Seminar of a long series, this time together with our colleagues of Tampere University who study "Journalism and Mass Communication" and "European Russian Studies".

In the CBU Program in Tampere we started since the very beginning planning our MA Thesis topics. I will never forget the first meeting in late September, when our coordinator Anni Kangas asked: "So, have you thought what are you going to write your thesis about?". I must have stared at her for some seconds ... and thought "is she kidding? We've just come and I'm maybe starting to understand how things work here AND I've to start thinking of the Thesis??"

But that was a very good way to keep us focused! Meeting almost every week to brainstorm and familiarize with Tampere's academic standards!

I've to say that anyway that was a shock for me! Coming from Italy, where most of the exams and assignments are done orally, answering the professor, and almost no-one is initially interested in the final thesis, this was completely new. Anni was questioning us continuously and correcting almost every wrong comma. It was really demanding and sometimes really stressing ... but I've to admit that I'm really grateful for that! From my own experience, but also hearing other Finnish students, it is very hard in the humanities to find someone really devoted in teaching the academic methodology of research. And what we learned last year I believe is "pure gold"! Also if someone it is willing to continue researching!

The teaching of International Relations in Tampere University stresses particularly theories and methodology, and it took me almost the whole year to grasp the general picture and orientate my research ... I've never studied them so specifically before. In Italy, International Relations as a major is not very popular, and the more wide "Political Science" spans from the proper political science to anything else, covering economics, history and sociology. So I had to narrow down my spectrum. Even now I'm told many times to narrow and focus my topic!

We had a great help also from our current coordinator, Mikko Vähä-Sipilä, when Anni had to leave to continue her research in Helsinki. Though we had to write already a complete research plan for March, with Mikko we went through it once again, focusing on our primary data, research questions and methodology. To re-elaborate everything after the theoretical courses we had in the previous semester and concentrating on what is actually relevant for the thesis, help us in grounding better our topics. Plus the continuous seminars and presentations made us presenting our theses many times orally in English, so that I feel much more confident in discussing my research in very different situations.

The whole process is not easy. Sometimes some critique can put you down and make you wonder what are you actually doing. But they do help you in improving your work!

Almost all of us are preparing the theses with a critical/constructivist approach, except Erik, who, in the American tradition, is preparing a positivist critique of neo-realism. Knowing each other topics and interests helps us in suggesting the others new material and essays on what we are writing about, and that's really comforting!

Usually after our seminars, we have our unofficial meetings, at somebody's place or in some public sauna or pub where we relax and enjoy the evening. After a 4-hour"struggle" in a classroom, those are the perfect "after-match" :)

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Now outside the weather is pretty stormy and the first snow is already falling! Good omens for my departure! I've just got confirmed some day ago for a 2-month internship in Rovaniemi's Arctic Center, and I'll be leaving this Sunday.

All of us managed to have some internship somewhere (Sini at the Swedish Embassy, Laura and Leena at some Finnish Ministry) thanks also to some support from our department. Anyway we had to look for them ourselves. I really hoped to get to the Arctic Center, since my thesis will deal with the Arctic, and there I'll get for sure more information, discussions and possibly further inspiration!

So, the Southerner is moving further Northward!

Next time, live from Rovaniemi!

A Southerner studying the North :)

Welcome / Tervetuloa / Добро пожаловать

to the "Finnish-Russian CBU Master Program in International Relation" blog! (for your relief, from now on the "CBU-Blog"!)

To start with, a presentation of myself and the Program itself.
This is Stefano De Luca writing, Italian student in the University of Tampere. What is a Southern (or even "continental" European, as I've also been called often) doing so up North as in Finland?

The answer is quite easy: studying! After having achieved my Bachelor degree in Italy in Political Science/"Diplomatic and international studies", I was continuing there my curriculum. My interests of study were since the beginning Northern Europe and Russia, but the courses tended to be too general and more regionally focused in the Balkans or Middle East. The CBU Master Program in International Relations, was actually the most similar degree to what I want to specialize in, so I enrolled in immediately when possible. I went through the bureaucratic process of selection, was accepted and thus started my new Finnish university life in the summer 2009!

The acronym CBU stands for Cross-Border University, that is because our degree is planned and organized together with some North-Western Russian universities: specifically in our case, between the University of Tampere in Finland, the State University of Petrozavodsk, in Karelia, and the State University of Saint Petersburg in Russia. So, it is a cross-border cooperation program between Finland and Russia, and what it entails is a common "Study Program" recognized by both the countries, between three groups of students from the three universities, with a series of Autumn/Springs Schools: periods of 1-2 weeks of common courses held in one of the participant universities. Be sure, reader, that I'll describe them in future posts, but for now I can tell you that we had the 2009 Autumn School in Tampere, the 2010 Spring School in Petrozavodsk and the Autumn 2010 in Saint Petersburg (We just came back yesterday ... ).

Our majors are International Relations, Russian/European Media, and Russian/European Studies. Our focus is thus (as I was looking for), IR between Northern Europe, the European Union and Russia, Russian and other Nordic languages and their culture in the widest sense. All courses are held in English.

All together, we are around 20 students, 5 from Tampere. Small group, but effective! And pretty international too: two Finnish (Leena and Laura), a Swedish (Sini), a Finnish-American (Erik) and the "Southerner" (myself). We got along pretty well since the very beginning, also for the continuous common courses and Thesis Seminars we had together. More on the structure of the studies and our experiences in the last year coming up in the next posts.

Now, enough for a starter. Stay tuned for coming updates!

Visit cbu.fi for more information