News

Law and Government team win major IRCHSS award

28 February 2011

Pictured left to right: Dr John Doyle, Dr Donnacha Ó Beacháin, Dr Karen Devine and Dr Apostolos Agnanopoulos

A team of researchers from DCU’s School of Law and Government have received a €50,000 grant from the IRCHSS Research Development Initiative to conduct a major research project on the role of the OSCE and EU in the resolution of post-Soviet frozen conflicts.

Principal Investigator Dr Donnacha Ó Beacháin, along with team members Dr John Doyle, Dr Karen Devine and Dr Apostolos Agnanopoulos are members of the School’s research Centre for International Studies. Dr. Ó Beacháin is also currently a recipient of a €75,000 Marie Curie Fellowship from the European Commission to investigate the colour revolution phenomenon the former USSR.

According to Dr Ó Beacháin, “There currently exists a dearth of both theoretical and empirical research on frozen conflicts and on the place of the OSCE and EU as actors in these conflicts. This project will address the existing lacunae by firstly undertaking stock-taking reviews of the extant literature and policy documentation, and secondly undertake semi-structured interviews with key personnel involved. The project will produce in-depth analyses of interventions involving the OSCE and EU in four case studies, namely Nagorno-Karabakh, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and Transnistria”.

The findings will be disseminated, /inter alia/, in four policy papers prepared for the Department of Foreign Affairs. An international conference on the OSCE and frozen conflicts will be hosted by Dublin City University to coincide with Ireland’s first-time Chairmanship of the OSCE in 2012. A workshop with researchers, NGOs and civil servants working on the OSCE preparations will also be conducted as part of the research project.