(04.03.14) Between 17-18 February 2014, Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Belo Horizonte hosted the 1st EUROPEAN STUDIES CENTER CONFERENCE with the theme EUROPEAN STUDIES TODAY: EXPERIMENTS AND MODELS.

The conference was initiated by the Faculty of Economics (FACE) at UFMG and the embassy of the EU delegation in Brasília. EU ambassador Ana Paula Zacarias and the rector of UFMG, Ivan Domingues, emphasised in their speeches that European and EU studies are an important indicator of economic relations between Europe and other countries. They described European studies in Brazil as an important field of research with significant historical potential. Over the last three years, UFMG has made efforts to set up centres for regional studies, one of which is the European Studies Centre.

Several addresses were delivered by representatives from Europe (Helsinki University and Universitá de Bologna), the USA (University of Illinois), Japan (Hitsosubashi University) and Brazil (FGV), highlighting long established courses and research centres with a focus on Europe and/or the EU.

The director of the DFG Office Latin America, Dr. Dietrich Halm, gave some examples of current DFG funding in the field of European studies and spoke about a number of funding programmes offered by the DFG and the European Research Council (ERC).