Join the The Director of the Fulbright Student Program Outreach for an information session to learn more about the The Fulbright US Student Program, which promotes mutual understanding through educational and cultural exchange. Fulbright awards provide research/study or English teaching grants in 150+ countries for seniors, graduate students and alumni (US citizenship required). Often students must begin networking before the end of the spring semester to be a competitive applicant. Summer preparation is necessary to meet the campus deadline.

The Pittsburgh Asia Consortium (PAC) Undergraduate Research Conference is a one-day, interdisciplinary event for students from PA, WV, OH, MD, NY, NJ, and DE with an interest in any geographical region of Asia. Students will give a 15-minute presentation on Asia-related research topics from any discipline, with faculty from PAC overseeing each student panel. First time presenters are welcome! Students will meet other undergraduates and faculty with an academic interest in Asian Studies from throughout the region, and enjoy a keynote presentation and banquet lunch.

Join the European Union Center of Excellence and European Studies Center for a lunchtime discussion as Andrea Aldrich, Ph.D. Candidate in the Department of Political Science, presents her research on the national European parties and their relationships with European Elections and Members of the European Parliament. Assuming that political parties have office, vote, and policy seeking goals in any electoral contest, she will argue these goals in European elections are defined by their ability to seize opportunities in national politics and their preferences for European integration.

Political and economic decentralization is the immediate systemic change needed for Ukraine to become a stable and healthy democracy. Democratic regional decentralization would have three important and distinct benefits for Ukraine's nascent democratic institutions.

1. It would be an effective guarantee that important local economic and social decisions are made by the people most affected by these decisions, rather than being dictated by whichever party comes to power in Kiev.

Ms. Radomski will present her scholarly research to her BPHIL faculty committee and guests.

In this month’s installment of our Conversations on Europe virtual roundtable series, a panel of experts and audiences from European Union Centers across the U.S. will engage in a discussion of the upcoming Scottish referendum on independence from Britain scheduled for September of this year and the possibility of a UK referendum on EU membership that could occur as early as 2016. How likely is Scottish independence? What would be the prospects of an independent Scotland in the European Union?

The Cold War “ended” with the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991. Almost 23 years later, the division between Russia and the West has returned to the forefront of U.S. national security concerns. Ukraine, a former Soviet Socialist Republic, is now a flashpoint for conflict. Russia threatens to invade Ukraine to protect the Russian population living there after pro-Western protestors overthrew the pro-Russian Yanukovych regime. Russia’s interests are driving Russian forces to take control of the Crimean peninsula where a Russian Navy base is located.

Throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Croatian folk culture has been and continues to be used as cultural legitimization for both a Croatian nation and the integration of that nation into empires. Using documentation of historical displays of Croatian folk art in Vienna and Zagreb, this research explores the early-20th century transition of these objects from Habsburg museums of applied art to newly founded ethnographic museums after World War I.

The paper investigates the potential effects of euro adoption on the Polish economy. It analyses how a replacement of the national currency -zloty, and therefore an elimination of a real exchange rate, affects output fluctuations. In the paper, we develop a utility-based theoretical framework to provide a metric for judgment of alternative monetary policies; identify and estimate the sources of aggregate fluctuations; and calibrate the model's structural parameters to Polish economy.