Call for Applicants: Swedish Institute Study Scholarships for Syrian Students

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Call for Applicants: Swedish Institute Study Scholarships for Syrian Students

By : Jadaliyya Reports

Due to the difficult situation in Syria, The Swedish Institute has decided to allocate up to 15 scholarships for Syrian students on an annual basis for two years.  The scholarships are for full-time master’s level studies in Sweden for the academic years of 2014/15 and 2015/16, i.e. a total maximum of 30 scholarships.

The scholarship offer is within the scope of the regular scholarship process for the Swedish Institute Study Scholarships. Scholarships are granted on condition that the students have been admitted to a master`s programme (i.e. not bachelor’s) at a Swedish university. However, all admitted students cannot be guaranteed a scholarship.

Applicants must be students from Syria with a bachelor`s degree from a Syrian university, but at the time of application and admission, reside in a country other than Syria, including Sweden. The scholarship is for applicants who have completed bachelor`s studies from a Syrian University.

Scholarship application period: February 3-11, 2014.

Detailed information about the application process will be published on December 2, 2013.

Who Is Eligible?

There is no age limit for scholarship holders.

A scholarship cannot be granted for a student who:

  • Has already lived in Sweden for two years or more previous to the scholarship period.
  • Has previously been awarded a Swedish Institute scholarship for master’s level studies or research at a Swedish university/university college.
  • Already holds a degree from a Swedish university/university college.
  • Is currently enrolled in a study programme at a Swedish university/university college.

Eligible Programmes

A list of eligible master programmes will be published on December 2 - at the latest.

The list will include the majority of the master programmes presented at University Admissions. The programmes are selected by the Swedish universities.

Scholarship Benefits and Period

The scholarship covers both the tuition fee (which is paid directly to the Swedish university/university college by the Swedish Institute) and living expenses to the amount of SEK 9,000 per month.

The scholarship is only awarded for programmes starting in the autumn semester (August/September) and is granted for one academic year, i.e. for two semesters at a time. It will be extended for programmes longer than two semesters provided that the student`s study results are satisfactory.

The scholarship is designed to cover living costs and study expenses for the scholarship holder. There are no grants for family members. The granted scholarship period cannot be altered or extended beyond the study programme period nor can the scholarship be transferred to another study programme at a Swedish university.

Travel Grants

Scholarship holders will receive a travel grant in connection with the scholarship. The travel grant is a one-time payment of SEK 15,000.

Insurance

Scholarship holders are insured by the Swedish State Group Insurance against illness and accident during the scholarship period.

SI Network for Future Global Leaders

All Swedish Institute scholarship holders are invited to become members of the SI Network for Future Global Leaders – a network that offers unique opportunities during and after the stay in Sweden. Together with other talented people from all around the world, the scholarship holder is able to take part in a variety of events, exchange ideas and create networks that benefit both to career and personal development.

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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 


[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412