Cooperation with Swedish Universities

Victoria Vasilenko, Assistant Professor of Contemporary History and International Area Studies in the Department of History and Philology at BelSU, had an internship at Lund University in October 2014.

A six-month internship of the Belgorodian scholar at key Swedish universities and research institutions in 2013-2014 was supported by the Sverker Astrom Foundation. 

In the course of her stay in Sweden, Victoria Vasilenko found out more about innovative teaching methods and the student-oriented curriculum; she conducted a research project at Uppsala University, Lund University and the Swedish Institute of International Affairs (Stockholm). Both universities are ranked among the top 100 universities in the world, while the Institute is one of the leading Swedish think-tanks proving expertise in the domain of international affairs.

As the Department of History and Philology has been developing, in cooperation with Middle Tennessee State University, an open-access journal project TRACTUS AEVORUM, the Lund University advanced practices in open-access scholarly publishing, including DOAJ (Directory of Open Access Journals), were of much interest for the Belgorodian researcher. 

Victoria Vasilenko notes that there are good prospects of further cooperation between Russian and Swedish scholars, namely, between those in the Department of History and Philology (BelSU) and the Uppsala Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies (Uppsala University).