Two EPRC PhD students - Eleftherios Antonopoulos and Dorine Boumans - have won places at a prestigious EU Master Class following an international competition drawing entries from 36 countries.
Organised by the European Commission, the Committee of the Regions, and the Regional Studies Association, the EU Master Class on Cohesion Policy is being held for the first time as part of the annual Open Days University being held in Brussels on 7-10 October. The Open Days European Week of Regions and Cities, now in its eleventh year, draws thousands of policy officials, practitioners from across Europe. The event includes the Open Days University which presents new research on regional and urban development. The Master Class is being run to improve the understanding of EU Cohesion Policy and its research potential among selected European postgraduate students and early-career researchers (ECRs). In addition to lectures on the latest developments in research on European regional and urban development and EU Cohesion Policy, the event will enable postgraduates and ECRs meet with EU politicians, officials and senior academics in the field of European regional and urban development and policy and network with students from countries inside and outside the EU and with the wider EU policy and academic communities.
Competition for the 77 places on the Master Class was intense, with a large number of applications from throughout the EU as well as from many non-EU countries. The EPRC achievement in having two successful candidates is a tribute to the quality of applications from Eleftherios Antonopoulos (who has recently been awarded his PhD on the impact of EU pre-accession aid on institutional capacity-building in Croatia) and Dorine Boumans (who is in the second year of a PhD, co-funded by the Scottish Government, on the governance of Structural Funds in Scotland). Further information on the ODU 2013 Master Class is available here