National Europe Centre receives major funding

The National Europe Centre (NEC) at ANU will continue to foster scholarly dialogue and research between Europe and Australia with a $1 million plus funding boost from the European Union.

The European Commission recently announced that it will co-finance the NEC for another three and a half years.

NEC Director Professor Simon Bronitt said the new funding arrangement would precipitate a change in focus for the centre, which will form part of the new Research School of the Humanities.

“When it was established in 2001, the NEC was intended to promote the understanding of the European Union in Australia,” Professor Bronitt said.

“I think the NEC has done a great job at this, especially on campus. The challenge has been to get the balance between the conventional academic activity and the outreach focus: engaging with the European Union, the Diplomatic Community, and public policy practitioners as well as the general public.

“The new mission of the NEC will be to facilitate dialogue and research between Europe and Australia. We’ll be fostering more comparative and interdisciplinary activities across a range of fields, including economics, environmental studies, law, international relations, political science, humanities, and art and culture.”

Professor Bronitt said the NEC will act as a coordinating centre for new postgraduate and academic research, harnessing the talents and interests of scholars from ANU and elsewhere.

He said the centre had a proven track record of raising awareness about Europe in Australia through programs such as the Inaugural 2005 European Summer School, which was funded by the office of the Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Education) Professor Malcolm Gillies, and the international conference on sustainable water management which compared water policy in Europe, America and Australia.

“We’re constantly engaged with the Diplomatic Community in Canberra, representing ANU at diplomatic functions,” Professor Bronitt said.

“In the long term, the mission of the NEC is to help build sustainable European expertise and academic programs at ANU and in Australia. Understandably, much of the focus at ANU is on Asia and the Pacific. I believe it’s also important that we engage with the European Community through comparative scholarship for the benefit of staff and students.”

The Delegation of the European Commission to Australia and New Zealand will host an event in Federation Square in Melbourne at the end of this month to celebrate the new funding for the NEC.

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