[MGSA-L] MGS in Copenhagen at risk of closure - intl petition

[Trine Stauning Willert]

Dear colleagues across the Atlantic and around the world,

I hereby ask for your support to prevent the severe cuts that the Danish government has launched which, if realised, will definitively close down all the small foreign language and area studies of our internationally renowned Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies including the study program and research environment of Modern Greek Studies.

The program in Modern Greek Studies has existed for more than 40 years and has covered research areas as varied as modern Greek poetry, contemporary Greek history, Greek dialects, byzantology, Danish-Greek relations in the 19th cent including H.C. Andersen's visit to Greece in the 19th cent, linguistics, the Greek school system, Greek perceptions of Europe, contemporary Greek theological and religious discourse, the contemporary Greek historical novel and others. There have been periods when the program enjoyed international recognition especially in the field of contemporary Greek history and today the program is envisioning a revitalization with many initiatives in research and teaching cooperation with other fields (religion, history, Balkan Studies, Modern Turkey Studies a.o.) and cooperation across borders in the framework of the European Society of Modern Greek Studies and The Modern Greek Studies Association of America. Currently the program has two externally funded assistant professorships (literature/history and linguistics respectively). Both positions will end in 2016 which means that it will be easy for the Faculty of the Humanities not to advertise the scheduled associate professorship and thereby in a 'natural' way closing down the program.

A colleague of mine, Jan Ulrich-Sobisch, associate professor in Tibetology, has launched an international petition against the university reform that will hit the Faculty of the Humanities of the University of Copenhagen very hard and in particular our department with many small foreign language and area studies that are not directly economically sustainable (but that all attract huge external research funds -  in our MGS section only we have received three large externally funded research projects over the past six years).

I therefore urge you to sign and support our fight to preserve the university in Denmark as an institution for research, non-profitable thinking and cross-cultural communication instead of turning it into  a servicing unit for the work market (the Minister's argument for cutting in the field of the Humanities is that candidates from these disciplines become useless unemployed citizens, a myth that is, however, not supported by statistics).

https://www.change.org/p/minister-sofie-carsten-nielsen-denmark-minister-sofie-carsten-nielsen-preserve-the-humanities-at-copenhagen-university#share

Please forward anywhere you find appropriate.

Many thanks!

Sincerely yours,
Trine S. Willert


________________________________

Trine Stauning Willert
Assistant Professor

Faculty of the Humanities
Department of Cross-Cultural and Regional Studies
MODERN GREEK STUDIES
University of Copenhagen
Karen Blixens Vej 4, 2300 Copenhagen S.
-
Phone: 5130 0779
tsw at hum.ku.dk<mailto:tsw at hum.ku.dk>


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