Foreword
EU harmonization processes such as in Eastern and Central Europe, the Balkans, and Turkey after the 90s, and the transition to a free market economy increased significantly the number of universities and university students. In addition, programs such as study abroad, Erasmus programs, and Turkey Scholarships, have increased and transformed education globally, with the mobility and interaction of undergraduate and graduate students, incomparably with the past. Along with all these positive developments, like the internal political structures of countries and cultural institutions, the capacity to direct the transition process varies in each country. The problem of academic knowledge production, its quality, its depth, and its content have shaped the relational dimension.
As Turkey’s concrete interest in the region, its contribution to postgraduate education and academic knowledge production through Turkiye Scholarships, and the interaction of the qualified audience doing postgraduate studies in the Balkans can produce extremely important outputs. While Turkish students are generating knowledge about the Balkans, contacting the region and its people, on the other hand, the interaction of the young academics of the region working on the Balkans with each other can form the basis of many future types of research.
The Balkan Studies Congress is an international congress organized to encourage interdisciplinary studies in the field of social sciences and for contributing to qualified and original academic output.
The Balkan Studies Congress aims to increase the quality of postgraduate studies by allowing for versatile communication and experience to be transferred to young academicians and to increase academic interaction and activity within the region and with Turkey. The congress aims to contribute to developing a common language and method by encouraging interdisciplinary approaches to overcome the difficulties with qualified academic output experienced in the states and societies that have many troubled areas ahead of them while still trying to recover from the effects of the wars in the Western Balkans after 1990.
The 2nd Balkan Studies Congress which was held in Tirana between 16 – 18 September 2022, clearly demonstrated the applicability of the above-mentioned framework in a very short time.
In this context, we would like to express our endless thanks for their support to the Presidency for Turks Abroad and Related Communities, International Balkan University, ILEM Organization, University of New York in Tirana, and Istanbul Medeniyet University.
Dr. Sevba Abdula
Assist. Prof. Dr. Bujamin Bela
Msc. Semran Murtezani
