Masaryk University is now in its third semester of organising inter-university virtual seminars in cooperation with universities from Ecuador, Argentina, the Dominican Republic and the United Kingdom. Last spring, MU also invited students and teachers from two Ukrainian universities to take part in the seminars, and they enthusiastically accepted the invitation. The collaboration has been a great success.
The inter-university seminars, which currently involve more than 40 students from seven universities, are unique not only in helping Ukrainian students and teachers keep in touch with the outside world and find diversion at a time when their country has been at war for two years, but also in their overall concept. They allow students to meet their counterparts from different cultural backgrounds, to reflect and discuss current issues of global importance, and to develop their communication skills in a foreign language.
“The virtual seminars were created as part of an international and interdisciplinary project called Epistemic Injustice, in which Masaryk University has been cooperating with five partner universities for three years. As part of the project, we first worked on the topic of migration, and the results were exciting, so we at Masaryk University kept thinking about how to incorporate it into teaching until we came up with the idea of opening a specialised course at the Faculty of Social Sciences. And so, in the autumn of 2022, we opened for the first time a course called Building Conference Skills to help students develop their presentation skills,” says Athena Alchazidu from the Language Centre of Masaryk University.
In the newly created course Building Conference Skills, five students from Masaryk University can gain experience preparing conference papers and presenting them at student virtual seminars each semester. Similarly, teachers from partner universities – London College in the UK, Universidad del Azuay in Ecuador, Pontificia Pontificia Universidad Católica Madre y Maestra and Universidad Católica de Salta in Argentina prepare their students for presenting their topics at the conferences. Each university is thus represented at the seminars by around five to ten students.
The topic of migration in different contexts
In line with the aims of the Epistemic Injustice project, the inter-university virtual meetings throughout the semester focus on the issue of migration in different social contexts. Students and lecturers present individually developed team projects in joint virtual seminars and discuss and work in small groups during the rest of the course. Projects usually focus on issues related to contemporary migration flows in South America and Europe.
In the first semester, students focused on refugees in the Latin American region, for example in Ecuador, Venezuela and Bolivia. In the European context, the main focus has been on Ukraine - which the MU students have also chosen to focus on. The students from the Faculty of Social Studies and the Faculty of Arts were joined by law students from Kateřina Chudová’s English course. Together, the five of them introduced their international counterparts to the issue of Ukrainian war refugees from the perspective of Czech law. Especially for students from Latin America, the MU students’ presentation was very beneficial because Ukraine is not as big a topic for their region as it is in Europe.
MU student from Ukraine helped to start cooperation with universities in Ukraine
The seminars were held for the third time this year and Masaryk University has received positive feedback from the very beginning. Students are enthusiastic not only about the unconventional format of the seminars and the opportunity to meet students from all over the world but also about the thematic focus of the seminars. In addition, students from Ukraine joined the seminars after the first semester, which made the seminars on migration and war refugees even more interesting. The students from all five partner universities also welcomed the new Ukrainian students and teachers with enthusiasm – not only because they could see the reality of Ukrainian students living and studying at home in Ukraine, but also because it helped them to keep in touch with the outside world.
The Ukrainian universities, however, became involved almost by accident. This was largely due to Taisiia Chepys, a Ukrainian student from Masaryk University, who registered for the seminars when it first started. She had just started her first year as part of the special admissions process for Ukrainian students that MU opened after the war broke out in Ukraine. Like other MU students, she enjoyed the seminars so much that she remarked to the teachers that it would be exciting if students currently in Ukraine could join.
“We liked the idea very much, so from the following spring semester, we invited the Uzzhorod National University and our partner language institute Horlivka, originally from Donbass but has had to move twice because of the war. First, in 2014, it moved to Bakhmut, and then, after the Russian army destroyed the city, it moved to the city of Dnipro. We have been working with both universities for a long time, helping our colleagues in Horlivka to rebuild their library after they fled the war in Donbas. Masaryk University donated books to them last year when they had to move for the second time,” says Athena Alchazidu.
And so it happened that in the spring of 2023, the Epistemic Justice project expanded to include twelve Ukrainian students and their four teachers from Uzzhorod National University and Horlivka Institute for Foreign Languages. While the previous semester's seminars focused on migration from the perspective of refugees, this semester’s seminars focused on migration from the perspective of the host country and the ways in which the majority can help people who have left their homeland. Students from the Czech Republic again focused on Ukrainian refugees in their group project. In their presentation, apart from the various programmes in the Czech Republic to help Ukraine, they also introduced their Latin American and British counterparts to the activities of the MUNI HELPS Volunteer Centre, which was of great interest to their colleagues from the UK and Latin America.
“It was an exciting meeting and we all welcomed the fact that we were joined by students from Ukraine who were able to tell us more about the situation in Ukraine. This was particularly appreciated by the Latin American students, who asked the Ukrainian students many questions. It often happened that students in the virtual seminar rooms had very long discussions about current events,” says Athena Alchazidu.
Ukrainian students’ summer enriched by film debates
When classes ended at the end of the last academic year and students were about to go on summer holidays, Ukrainian teachers from the partner universities complained to their colleagues from the partner universities that, unlike their counterparts in Europe and Latin America, their students were not looking forward to the summer holidays because of the war. Their students were very sorry that the joint classes were coming to an end and that they would no longer be able to meet because they could not enjoy the holidays as much as before under the circumstances – the war means they cannot travel. During the academic year, the joint classes had at least given them some distraction from their predicament, but in the summer they had nothing to look forward to.
So Athena Alchazidu and Linda Krahula Doleží from the Language Centre of Masaryk University came up with the idea of organising Summer Cinema Sessions in the summer, where students could talk about selected films in English, Spanish and even Czech and practice their language skills and intercultural competencies. Although the students did not receive any credit for their participation, the idea was so popular that a group of about twenty students met weekly to discuss a variety of films, starting with Three Godfathers (dir. 1948) by John Ford, through Twelve Angry Men (1957) by Sidney Lumet to the Czech film Marecek, Pass Me the Pen! (1975) by Oldřich Lipský, which the Ukrainian students of the Czech language enjoyed very much.
“I’ve always loved films, so I didn’t hesitate to sign up for the group sessions where I could practise my English at the same time. Our film sessions were a refreshing thing to look forward to in the summer and I was happy to have the opportunity to interact with students from other countries. It was very useful for me to see films from different perspectives – especially the cultural one, where even a small detail makes a big difference in perception. I am very happy that such a cooperation between universities has been established. I highly recommend it to everyone,” says Anastasiia Tesliuk, a student at the Horlivka Institute.
Her teacher Olena Yasynetska from the Horlivka Institute also welcomed the summer film afternoons: “The film sessions were a pleasant distraction for our students from the intense stress of the war. They were able to practise their foreign languages, meet new people from different parts of the world and have discussions”. Her colleague Vladislav Bezkorovayny adds that the meeting had a charming atmosphere: “It felt like we had all known each other for a long time. We received great feedback from the students of the summer course; they enjoyed it very much”.
The seminars delighted not only the Ukrainian students and their teachers, but also Patricia Tineo, a university lecturer in the Dominican Republic. “It was an amazing experience and my students and I were thrilled with the summer film sessions. It was exciting to hear the opinions of other students and teachers about the films shown. And the discussions that followed were even more interesting. It was also very valuable for us to meet Ukrainian students and teachers. Even though you are always watching the news, their stories were eye-opening for many of us,” says Patricia Tineo.
From pilot project to long-term collaboration
However, the summer film meetings did not mark the end of the collaboration. In the autumn semester, the two previous seminars were followed by another, this time focusing on the Epistemics of Inclusion, the inclusion of foreigners in the majority society. The seminar again brought together students from MU and students from Latin America, the UK and Ukraine. Teachers from all participating universities saw great value in this teaching format and wanted to continue teaching together. In addition, from next semester, the seminars will be extended to include students and teachers from Binaly Yilderim University in Turkey, which will make the teaching even more interesting, as Turkey has experienced different types of migration than Europe or Latin America.
The project is now continuing in the spring semester. “Our cooperation has shown us that such activities are useful and we want to continue in this direction. Sharing online learning with partner universities is very enriching in terms of content, and it is also a practical experience that students particularly appreciate. That’s something we teachers are happy about. We also saw a lot of value in our meetings, because we could at least help to make teaching more interesting for Ukrainian students. And it has to be said that they were grateful. That is why we are going to continue our cooperation in the next academic year. We want to show Ukrainian students and teachers that they are not alone in their difficult situation,” says Athena Alchazidu from Masaryk University.