General Information

INNOVATIVE SOCIOLOGY

(SOUTH-EAST EUROPEAN SOCIETIES IN TRANSFORMATION)

Motivation

The project aims at twinning of the Department of Sociology (Faculty of Philosophy at the Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski", Bulgaria) and the Institute of Sociology (Faculty of Philosophy at the Skopje University "Ss. Cyril and Methodius", Macedonia). Recent trend towards growing contacts is already visible in the establishment of Balkan Sociology Association in October 2000 in Bankia, Bulgaria, marking the beginning of institutional integration between national sociological communities in South-East Europe.

The Sociology Department is an autonomous structure within the larger formation of the Faculty of Philosophy, Sofia University "St. Kliment Ohridski". It has a staff of 16 lecturers and two administrative assistants securing training in sociology for some 300 students annually on Bachelor's, Master's, and Doctoral programmes. The Institute of Sociology at the Skopje University also has a teaching staff of 18 members providing sociology instruction mainly at Bachelor's level national equivalent.

Sociology training in both Bulgaria and Macedonia definitely needs innovation into focusing on the development of new sociological subjects/courses to explore the diversity of current social change. This kind of Higher education training will only prove itself ever more viable working out a shift of academic attention to cultivating research attitude as a basic component of sociologist's professional competence.

Since the sociology alumni are among the major opinion-makers, and the two nations themselves are vigorously heading for regional and European integration, it is extremely important for Bulgarian and Macedonian sociologists to set professional standards together and communicate professionally within a common area of interest gaining compatible educational experience and cultural resources. By taking part in actual research process on topics of high public significance the future graduates from both institutions will acquire adequate expertise for a career to contribute further into sustaining sociological culture as fundamental to the civic education and as a key mediator in the constituting of regional trans-national civil society.

Main aims and tasks

Joint development of courses committed to innovative perspective in terms of contents and teaching methods (learning by doing) in such fields as:

• • Globalization, European integration and regional partnership

  • Comparative analysis of social life restructuring; Comparative sociology of labour market and informal economic activities; of politics and democracy stabilization process; of ethnic relationships, identity formation and conflict solving; sociology of civil society and civic education

  • Rethinking classics of sociology in the context of contemporary societies and development of sociology of sociology

  • New research methods with emphasis on qualitative analysis and techniques for visual information analysis

The jointly developed syllabi in innovative sociology will be fitting: to be integrated as a module into a Bachelor's degree curricula; to work out as autonomous Master's program run in parallel with other MA program in sociology; its modules to be used under other Master's or doctoral programs.

The project is mainly orientated to strategic development of the junior faculty with the two institutions in Sofia and Skopje through its active and intensive involvement in the teaching process and in real research team work. Project's international character would guarantee the possibilities for horizontal mobility and stimulate junior faculty participation in international academic events and publications, thus also enhancing vertical academic mobility.

The project will set up informational, technological and organizational basis for sustaining academic relationships between the two institutions to carry out on their own in the long run.

The above aims will be attained by means of:

• • Joint development of courses on the part of teams comprising Bulgarian and Macedonian staff, doctoral and undergraduate students;

  • Courses will derive from genuine research process in the field of the above mentioned major thematic areas;

  • A major resource will be the setting up and maintaining of Innovative Sociology programme's web-site containing the information basis for the particular courses (all the syllabi needed for the training, as well as the research data-base), so that the program will be continuously operative after the project expires.

The Deans of the two faculties will conduct on-going monitoring by semester, and the evaluation of project activity effectiveness will employ student feedback and outside expert assessment - by Prof. Laurence Ray, Head of the Department of Sociology at the University of Kent, UK.

The results attained under the project will lay the groundwork for methodological, information, technological and organizational basis for long-term academic partnership between the two institutions to be sustained on their own resources upon project completion.

Improvement of sociological knowledge and junior staff development will come together with building up civil culture and European consciousness. The overall project outcome will be a comparative sociology of the Bulgarian and Macedonian societies in transition, which may serve as a basis for further analysis and generalization on the transformations taking place in South-East Europe. The expert knowledge thus obtained by the students will be of assistance to the process of civil society stabilization and raising the public standards of civil society culture.