Fifty-six post-graduate students, researchers, and media professionals from as many as twenty countries participated in the Olympia Summer Seminars of the Kokkalis Foundation, held on July 1-July 15, 2007 in the city of Olympia, Greece.
The Olympia summer seminars 2007 were organized in collaboration with US universities Yale and Duke, with the University of Macedonia and the University of Patras, as well as with the municipality of ancient Olympia and the Interscientific and Intercultural Center of Olympia.This year the seminars registered a record 200 applications and the selected participants represented the following countries: Albania (2), Bulgaria (3), Czech Republic (1), China (2), FYROM (3), Georgia (1), Germany (1), Greece (15), Hungary (1), Israel (1), Italy (1), Moldova (1), Nigeria (1), Poland (2), Romania (2), Russia (4), Serbia (3), Spain (1), Turkey (9), Ukraine (1) and USA (1).
The group gathered in Olympia to follow two different seminar programs, one on War, Conflict, and Identities and the other on International Media Technology and Policy. The seminars were conducted by seven leading faculty from Serbia and FYROM, from Yale University, Duke University, and UCLA in the United States, and from Valle University in Colombia.
Under the scientific coordination of Yale University professor Stathis Kalyvas, the seminar on War, Conflict, and Identities offered a concise, yet in-depth, overview of new theoretical and empirical research on a range of topics at the intersection of students war, conflict, and identity, including interstate and civil war, terrorism, riots and genocide, and the dynamics of conflict. The seminar on International Media Technology and Policy was led by Duke University Professor Ellen Mickiewicz and explored new dimensions on a number of media and media policy issues of particular concern to future European Union member states.In the two weeks of the seminars, the participants also had the opportunity to visit local archaeological sites, museums, areas of historical interest in the Peloponnesian region, as well as to attend cultural events including L. Vogiatzis' theatre production of Sophocles Antigone in the 2007 Olympia festival.
(i) Ancient Olympia and the ideals of peace and cooperation provided the ideal backdrop for the seminars, which aim to promote effective intercultural dialogue and critical thinking on crucial political issues of our times and to reiterate Olympia's role as an international centre for intellectual inquiry.
