An international seminar on digital security and strengthening the research-policy nexus was held in Odesa at the Faculty of Journalism of the National University "Odesa Law Academy".
According to the organiser of the seminar, Professor of the Department of Journalism, Doctor of Public Administration Tetiana Maliarenko, the seminar was held as part of a project implemented by the Ukrainian Institute for Crisis Management and Conflict Resolution, which once received funding from the Jean Monnet Programme of the European Union for a two-year period on the relevant topic. According to her, during the seminar, Ukrainian and foreign scholars delivered a series of lectures and workshops aimed at improving the digital skills of teachers and researchers, using academic information retrieval systems, and digital libraries that can be used in teaching and research.
The event was held in a so-called mixed format, with some lecturers - both Ukrainian and foreign (from Macedonia and Kazakhstan) - conducting classes offline in the classrooms of the National University "Odesa Law Academy", and some - online. For example, Dr Michael Minakov (Wilson Center, Washington, DC) and Dr Chad Briggs (University of Alaska, Anchorage) joined the seminar from the United States via the ZOOM streaming program, where they spoke about national security and privacy in cyberspace, as well as disinformation tactics on social media and measures to counteract them.
The participants also discussed issues related to modern conflicts in cyberspace, data visualisation and infographics, crisis response to destructive cyberinformation influences, etc. Traditionally, the presentations and training delivered by Ukrainian scholars Professor Yuriy Danik and Associate Professor Taras Liutii aroused great interest among the participants.
Reference. The Jean Monnet Programme is one of the educational programmes of the European Union, named after the famous French statesman, one of the founders of the European Union. Its goal is to raise the level of knowledge and awareness of society in the EU and beyond on European integration issues by stimulating teaching and research. Established in 1989, the programme has funded more than 4,000 projects on European integration.
Since 2013, the Jean Monnet Programme has been a component of the Erasmus+ programme.