Abstract TRRT 2024 Dr. Ekaterina Koldunova
MGIMO's Experience of Designing a Unique MA Degree Program in Political Economy of ASEAN-Russia Strategic Partnership
Dr. Ekaterina Koldunova
MGIMO University, Moscow
Abstract
Due to ASEAN-Russia relations have entered new phase with two anniversaries celebrated in 2021 (the 30th Anniversary of ASEAN–Russia relations and the 25th Anniversary of ASEAN–Russia dialogue partnership), The pandemic and current international transformations have made impossible business-as-usual approaches to many traditional ways of developing our relations, a solution to a long-standing problem of internships for ASEAN students, and a way to forge ASEAN identity beyond its borders and to make Russia’s contribution to ASEAN community building process more visible and useful.
The MA program aims to train a group of ASEAN and Russian students ready to interact with each other beyond classrooms and to make ASEAN-Russia strategic partnership development a part of their career paths (socialization through education) by using three terms of core courses, electives and master classes, one term of internship, MA thesis defense. The Program’s interdisciplinary approach entails a constellation of several thematic blocks of courses: (1) Regional and global processes, ASEAN and Russia’s role in these processes, ASEAN-Russia relations (2) Macroeconomics, microeconomics, contemporary international political economy trends, digital economy, business processes in Russia and ASEAN, and (3) Legal regulations of our relations, ICT, data analysis
The finding on key success factors are Partnerships with the universities in the ASEAN member states, Identification of the prospective students, Information about co-funding opportunities (e.g. governmental programs in ASEAN member states which could have helped to provide additional funding for the students) and Other forms of collaboration: e.g. visiting lecturers, conferences, internship opportunities