Faculty of Law and Social Sciences
Constitution-Making and deliberative democracy
Duration: 17/09/2018 - 16/09/2022
Epoka University Cost Participant: Dr. Alba Gerdeci
Short Description:
In Europe and across the world, several countries are turning to deliberative democracy to reform their constitutions, and in many others this question is high on the political agenda. Such transformation also shuffles quite radically the role of the citizenry regarding constitutional changes. Traditionally such changes are the sole responsibility of elected officials, in collaboration with experts. With the deliberative turn, many more actors may be involved in the designing of constitutions: citizens both individually and collectively in the forms of informal associations, social movements, civil society organizations, participatory consultants, and research teams. The Main Aim of the Action is to bring together all these actors – who are usually not in contact – to discuss and reflect on this democratic challenge, not only in terms of normative ideals but also and above all on the empirical challenges raised by this complex and multi-faceted democratic transformation.
Global Atrocity Justice Constellations
Duration: 2020-2024
Epoka University Cost Participant: Dr. Alba Gerdeci
Short Description:
JUSTICE-360 focuses on International Criminal Courts and Tribunals (ICTs), aiming to reverse the adjudicating-focused and ICT-centered analysis dominant in popular and political discourse, instead analyzing how ICTs are received in domestic contexts and how this reception shapes the space in which they work. The Action offers a panoramic 3600 view of global atrocity constellations to understand how ICT ideas and practices are received in domestic settings and how this shapes global responses to international crimes, victims and perpetrators. This broader angle is crucial not only as a way to reliably assess the ICTs’ impacts and to map out various ways they may shape legal and social realities in other contexts, but also because the ICTs themselves rely deeply on cooperation from national stakeholders and are in turn shaped by them. This has become particularly visible in the growing opposition to ICTs over the past decade. Disentangling the atrocity justice constellations of which the ICTs are key elements will reveal how their practices and impacts are structured by surrounding legal, political, societal and cultural landscapes.
European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network
Duration: 13/12/2018 - 12/11/2022
Epoka University Cost Participant: Dr. Islam Jusufi
Short Description:
ENTAN – the European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network is a COST Action aimed at examining the concept of non-territorial autonomy (NTA), from both a comparative and comprehensive perspective. ENTAN particularly focuses on NTA arrangements for reducing inter-ethnic tensions within a state and on the accommodation of the needs of different communities while preventing calls to separate statehood. The Action tackles recent developments in the theories and practices of cultural diversity; minority rights (including linguistic and educational rights); state functions and sovereignty; conflict resolution through policy arrangements; policy making and inclusiveness; self-governance and autonomy. The main objective is to investigate the existing NTA mechanisms and policies and to develop new modalities for the accommodation of differences in the context of growing challenges stemming from globalization, regionalization and European supranational integration. Along with issues related to the culture and education of diverse groups within a nation state, and legal arrangements for the recognition and practice of separate identities, the Action focuses on political strategies and policies that have the potential to increase the autonomy of stateless nations and to empower cultural, ethnic and religious communities. The network is built upon agreed research activities, which include interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary group work, the training and empowerment of young researchers, academic conferences and publications, and the dissemination of results to policy makers, civil society organizations and communities.
European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network
Duration: 13/12/2018 - 12/11/2022
Epoka University Cost Participant: Dr. Reina Shehi
Short Description:
ENTAN – the European Non-Territorial Autonomy Network is a COST Action aimed at examining the concept of non-territorial autonomy (NTA), from both a comparative and comprehensive perspective. ENTAN particularly focuses on NTA arrangements for reducing inter-ethnic tensions within a state and on the accommodation of the needs of different communities while preventing calls to separate statehood. The Action tackles recent developments in the theories and practices of cultural diversity; minority rights (including linguistic and educational rights); state functions and sovereignty; conflict resolution through policy arrangements; policy making and inclusiveness; self-governance and autonomy. The main objective is to investigate the existing NTA mechanisms and policies and to develop new modalities for the accommodation of differences in the context of growing challenges stemming from globalization, regionalization and European supranational integration. Along with issues related to the culture and education of diverse groups within a nation state, and legal arrangements for the recognition and practice of separate identities, the Action focuses on political strategies and policies that have the potential to increase the autonomy of stateless nations and to empower cultural, ethnic and religious communities. The network is built upon agreed research activities, which include interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary group work, the training and empowerment of young researchers, academic conferences and publications, and the dissemination of results to policy makers, civil society organizations and communities.
EU Foreign Policy Facing New Realities
Duration: 2018-2022
Epoka University Cost Participant: Dr. Reina Shehi
Short Description:
EU foreign policy experiences unprecedented turbulences that put key achievements of the European integration project at risk. Externally, the EU’s global environment is characterized by the reconfiguration of power, growing divisions, and the contestation of established liberal order. Simultaneously, the EU’s neighborhood is increasingly conflict prone and instable, triggering migration flows and the proliferation of illiberal values. ‘Domestically’, the EU faces severe internal conflicts, marked by austerity, Brexit, growing nationalism, populism, and new protectionism.
The Action ENTER aims to improve our understanding of central properties of EU foreign policy considering these new realities, focusing on perceptions, communication, contestation. In today’s world, the success of EU foreign policy depends on the EU’s ability to instantaneously respond to stimuli and pressures originating from both the international and the intra-EU levels. Linking internal and external policy dynamics, the Action has a strong potential for breakthrough scientific developments. A central objective of the action is to derive theoretically informed, policy relevant advice for the EU's strategic approach to its international relations, its communication, and for dealing with the interaction between internal and external challenges. It will generate a step change in how the new realities of EU foreign policy are theorized and addressed. This will be achieved by establishing multi-national, multidisciplinary collaborations at the nexus of policy fields and research communities that have not sufficiently communicated in the past. Substantive efforts to bridge between the “academic-practitioner divide” are made, to synthesize knowledge, facilitate shared understandings, and inform EU foreign policy.
EU Foreign Policy Facing New Realities: Perceptions, Contestation, Communication and Relations
Duration: 2018-2022
Epoka University Cost Participant: Dr. Jubjana Vila
Short Description:
Externally, the EU’s global environment is characterized by the reconfiguration of power, growing divisions, and the contestation of established liberal order. ‘Domestically’, the EU faces severe internal conflicts, marked by austerity, Brexit, growing nationalism, populism and new protectionism.
The Action ENTER aims to improve our understanding of central properties of EU foreign policy in light of these new realities, focusing on perceptions, communication, contestation. In today’s world, the success of EU foreign policy depends on the EU’s ability to instantaneously respond to stimuli and pressures originating from both the international and the intra-EU levels. Linking internal and external policy dynamics, the Action has a strong potential for breakthrough scientific developments. A central objective of the action is to derive theoretically informed, policy relevant advice for the EU's strategic approach to its international relations, its communication, and for dealing with the interaction between internal and external challenges.
Multi-disciplinary innovation for social change
Duration: 2019-2023
Epoka University Cost Participant: Dr. Jubjana Vila
Short Description:
The aim of this Action is to demonstrate, through the adoption of Multi-Disciplinary Innovation (MDI) methods, how we can respond to social problems with a design-led approach which has a problem-oriented ethos, supporting positive social change and the development of international public policy discourse. It will be achieved through the establishment of a Pan-European Public Sector Innovation (ePSI) lab. It will prepare students for roles in employment by integrating education programmes into the lab's operations and it will support agencies that have a role in responding to and developing public policy.
European network for Web-Centred linguistic Data Science (NexusLinguarum)
Duration: 28/10/2019 – 28/10/2023
Epoka University Cost Participant: Dr. Mirela Alhasani
Short Description: The main aim of this Action is to promote synergies across Europe between linguists, computer scientist, terminologists, and other stakeholders in industry and society, in order to investigate and extend the area of linguistic data science. Linguistic data science is seen as a subfield of the emerging ‘data science’ which focuses on the systematic analysis and study of the structure and properties of data at large scale, along with methods and techniques to extract new knowledge and insights from it. In order to support the study of linguistic data science in the most efficient and productive way, the construction of a mature holistic ecosystem of multilingual and semantically interoperable linguistic data is required at Web scale. The action argues that linked data technologies in combination with natural language processing techniques and multilingual language resources (bilingual dictionaries, multilingual corpora, terminologies, etc.) have the potential to enable such an ecosystem that allow for transparent information flow across linguistic data sources in multiple languages, by addressing the semantic interoperability problem.
Multi3Generation: Multi-task, Multilingual, Multi-modal
Duration: 09/09/2019 - 08/09/2023
Epoka University Cost Participant: Dr. Mirela Alhasani
Short Description: Language generation (LG) is a crucial technology if machines are to communicate with humans seamlessly using human natural language. A great number of different tasks within Natural Language Processing (NPL) are language generation tasks, and being able to effectively perform these tasks implies (1) that machines are equipped with world knowledge that can require multi-modal processing and reasoning (e.g. textual, visual and auditory inputs, or sensory data streams), and (2) the stud of strong, novel Machine Learning (ML) methods (e/g structured prediction, generative models), since virtually all state-of-the-art NPL models are learned from data. Moreover, human languages can differ widely in their surface realization (i.e., scripts) as well as their internal structure (i.e., grammar) which suggests that multilingualism is a central goal if machines are to perform seamless language generation. Language generation technologies would greatly benefit both public and private services offered to EU citizens in a multilingual Europe and have strong economic and societal impacts.
Global Digital Human Rights Network (GDHRNet)
Duration: 14.09.2020-13.09.2024
Epoka University Cost Participant: Dr. Heliona Miço
Short Description:
The GDHRNet COST Action will systematically explore the theoretical and practical challenges posed by the online context to the protection of human rights. The network will address whether international human rights law is sufficiently detailed to enable governments and private online companies to understand their respective obligations vis-à-vis human rights protection online. It will evaluate how national governments have responded to the task of providing a regulatory framework for online companies and how these companies have transposed the obligation to protect human rights and combat hate speech online into their community standards. The matters of transparency and accountability will be explored, through the lens of corporate social responsibility.
Link: https://www.cost.eu/cost-action/global-digital-human-rights-network/
