Recognizing the universities’ role in strengthening civil society, democracy, and economic development the Academic Fellowship Program (AFP) aims to achieve lasting higher education reforms in Armenia by assisting progressive university departments and supporting promising scholars, who teach at these departments after returning from abroad with a competitive postgraduate degree. Through its Returning Scholars Fellowship Program AFP promotes the return of young scholars to Armenia, their positioning within academia and continued professional development. By doing so AFP not only contributes to higher education reforms in Armenia but also helps combating the brain-drain of young skilled scholars.
Program Administration
AFP is managed by headquarters in Budapest and four regional offices in the Caucasus, Central Asia and Mongolia, South East Europe, and Russia, Ukraine, Moldova. AFP has a supervisory board – the “Academic Advisory Council” (AAC) which oversees the process of selection and makes the final decision on recruitment of new partner departments and scholars. AFP Budapest office and regional offices are in charge of deciding renewal of partnership with the partner departments and scholars carried out in the spring/summer every year for the coming academic years. The AAC makes recommendations and is consulted on strategic matters related to:
- advising on priority disciplines/areas
- advising on geographical representation/distribution of the program
- cooperation with different stakeholders
The Academic Fellowship Program has been operating in Armenia (and in 16 other post-soviet countries) since 2004 under the umbrella of Open Society Foundations Higher Education Program. During this period AFP has supported up to 45 Returning Scholars who have contributed to the implementation of various programs, policies and approaches within six partner departments at Yerevan State University (YSU) and Yerevan State Linguistic University (YSLU) including the YSU Political Science, YSU Economics, YSU Sociology, YSU Psychology, YSU Law and YSLU Ed. Management departments.
AFP Partner Departments for the 2013/14 Academic Year:
| University | Department |
| Yerevan State University | Chair of EU and International Law |
| Yerevan State University | Department of Sociology |
| Yerevan State Linguistic University after V. Brusov | Chair on Education Management and Planning, Public Admin. |