November 19th 2021
On Thursday, November 18, our students had a very unique opportunity to look at the institutional perspective behind the EU asylum procedures and practical reality of refugees who go through the procedures, with two excellent experts in the field, during the Akademeia Seminar titled: ‘The Common European Asylum System: Theory and Practice’.
Dr Izabella Cooper and Dr Tim Cooper walked us through the history of how the European and international asylum laws were created, explained how they work in practice and shared insider perspective based on different case studies, including Syrian refugee crisis in 2015.
The seminar was engaging with many questions asked, and it gave students a broader perspective of this very current and complex issue. Students discussed push and pull factors of migrations and brainstormed how they would attempt to solve the situation of refugees worldwide if provided with unlimited resources.
We thank our excellent guests and are looking forward to hosting them again in the future.
About the speakers:
Dr Izabella Cooper worked for a number of international organisations, including the UN, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the EU and Frontex. She spent several years in various peacekeeping missions mainly in post-war Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo where she served as chief spokesperson of the Deputy Secretary General of the United Nations. Dr Cooper is currently involved in setting up of ETIAS – the European Travel Information and Authorisation System created by the European Union which will affect 1,4 billion travellers from visa-exempt countries.
Dr Cooper graduated in Mass Communication from the University of Bologna (Italy). She also studied Political Marketing at the University of California at Berkeley (USA) and conducted her PhD studies in Political Science at the European University Institute in Florence.
Dr Tim Cooper worked for the OSCE, the UN and the British Government in Bosnia, Kosovo and Lebanon as a political adviser and media expert. Over the last decade he has worked for the two principal European Union Agencies dealing with migration and asylum as a researcher and chief analyst.
Dr Cooper studied Astrophysics at University College London, Philosophy of Science in Bologna, Italy, and has a PhD in the History of Science from the University of Manchester.
