Written by: Maylany Ika Putri
Programme on European Studies Universitas Gadjah Mada, in collaboration with Universitas Muhammadiyah Malang (UMM) held The 4th Convention on European Studies. This event, which was fully funded by European Union, gathered European studies enthusiast from various university in Indonesia. The convention took place on 18-20 August 2016 in UMM.
The convention was begun by Public Seminar on “Multiculturalism in Europe and Its Challenges”. This theme was highlighted followed several cases that happened lately in the European continent, which some may see them as one of consequences for being multicultural Europe. This seminar invited three keynote speakers. From Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, we had Agung Cahaya Sumirat who talked about “Multiculturalism in EU and Indonesia”. Encountering the same issue on multiculturalism, Agung said, EU and Indonesia has cooperated in dealing the problem by initiating the ASEM Interfaith Dialogue since 2005.
The second speaker of the seminar was Hafid Adim Pradana from UMM. He talked mainly about “The Changing of Multicultural Policy in France”. Hafid stated that the multicultural policy taken by France in responding the wave of migrants can be seen as a zig-zag pattern, started from nationality multiculturalism to ethnicity multiculturalism, one after another.
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Our third speaker was Muhadi Sugiono from UGM. He discussed about “Negotiating Identity: European Challenges on Multiculturalism”. As EU has many faces of identity, Muhadi said, we cannot put a single name of “what” is European identity. European Union itself was established in order to accommodate the multiculturalism in the concept of unity in diversity. “EU identity is not given. It is constructed and still being under construction”, he remarked.
The convention continued with the Panel Discussion session, in which there were 7 paper presenters, divided in two parallel forums. The grand theme of the discussion was on “Redefining Europe”. This session was very interesting since we collected various views on the theme which was debated in three main issues: politics-security, economics-environment, and social-culture.
On the next day (19/08), there were two agendas held as another chain-event of the convention. These agendas were specially designed for the Indonesian Community for European Studies (ICES/KIKE) scholars. The first and second session of the day were filled with the Teaching Workshop on European studies. This workshop contained a follow-up discussion on module of European studies for undergraduate students, which has been a continuous endeavour to provide a common guideline in the European studies teaching process. Meanwhile, the next plans of ICES, one of them regarding the module, were discussed on the third session of the day, ICES Business Meeting. With 18 active participants, the teaching workshop and business meeting were very fruitful and gained optimism among the ICES scholars, which members are keep raising.
Maylany Ika Putri is currently Project Officer for Programme on European Studies UGM. She was graduated in 2015 from Department of International Relations UGM. She can be reached via maylanyip13@gmail.com .