ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses academic cooperation between the EU and Russia. We argue that academic cooperation and people-to-people relations represent an important field of interaction between the EU and Russia in times of severe political crisis. Evaluating academic cooperation, scholars have examined the rationales of actors involved at the supranational, national, institutional and personal levels. Currently, the EU and Russia demonstrate more of a political rationale for international academic cooperation, using academic cooperation as a tool of public diplomacy, whereas at the level of institutions and individuals, economic and academic rationales play a key role. The key debates in this field have mainly focused on the results of EU–Russia academic cooperation and have studied how Russia and Russian higher education (HE) have changed under the influence of or in cooperation with the EU. Scholars have addressed the issues of Europeanisation, democratisation, the modernisation of Russian HE, the nature of EU–Russia cooperation and the role of partners, often represented as a dichotomy between an asymmetrical and equal partnership. The Bologna Process has been the focus of studies concerning the gains, benefits and prospects for academia in the EU and Russia, a significant amount of this scholarship coming from Russians.
