Closing conference of the Tempus project: “PhD in Food Science and Technology and Creating Capacities for PhD Reform at the University of Prishtina / Kosovo” (PhD@UP)
Within the Tempus project “PhD in Food Science and Technology and Creating Capacities for PhD Reform at the University of Prishtina / Kosovo”, at the Faculty of Philosophy the final meeting including a conference on the topic “Doctoral Education in Kosovo – Trends and Challenges” was organised on the 12th and 13th of June 2014. Agenda of the event is available here.
The conference marked the successes of the project and it served also for the exchange of ideas for the finalisation of the project activities which are running until October 2014. In that regard a sustainability workshop was also organised in order for the consortium to draft a plan for the sustainability of the project results and especially the future implementation of the pilot PhD programme in Food Science and Technology as well as the realization of the recommendations for the improvement of the PhD structure at the University of Prishtina “Hasan Prishtina” (UP).
The public conference took place on the 12th of June. The main focus was the presentation of the PhD@UP project results, presentation of the current state of doctoral education in Europe from different aspects, including examples from best practice in the EU. Besides the University of Prishtina “Hasan Prishtina” as hosting institution, Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and Kosovo Accreditation Agency as main stakeholders from Kosovo, there were also representatives from three EU universities (Technical University Munich, University of Graz, and University of Granada), as well as other relevant actors in the area of higher education, i.e. Austrian Exchange Service and World University Service (WUS) Austria. The report containing the recommendations of the consortium for the improvement of the PhD structure at the UP was also presented and it can be downloaded here. (The Albanian version of this document will be published on the project website soon.)
The panel discussion on the topic of “Doctoral Studies in Kosovo – Trends and Challenges” was preceded by the presentation of the pilot PhD programme in Food Science and Technology by Prof. Bajram Berisha and the input by Ferdije Zhushi, the president of Kosovo Accreditation Agency, on the topic of “Future of doctoral studies in Kosovo”. A lively discussion was induced between the audience and the panelists which tackled many relevant issues regarding doctoral education at the UP and in Kosovo, thus from structure, implementation, financing etc. It provided the consortium and especially the UP staff and students with interesting information and insights.
WUS Austria is thankful to all project partners for their engagement and efforts throughout the three and a half years of project implementation and is happy that a lot of relevant results have been achieved so far. Even though this was the last meeting, we are continuing our work until October 2014 focusing especially on the sustainability plan and measures to assure the further implementation of the project activities and continuation and strengthening of the cooperation between the UP and EU partners.
For all presentations from the public event please check out the download section of the project web site.
