Skip to content

Research Centre Central and Eastern Europe

The Earth System Governance Research Center Central and Eastern Europe is committed to contribute to the implementation of the Earth System Governance Project as part of the global alliance of Earth System Governance Research Centres through interdisciplinary research across natural and social sciences. The Research Centre is hosted by the CETIP Network, a collaborative research platform dedicated to introducing novel ideas into interdisciplinary environmental research, education and policy making. CETIP’s main mission is interdisciplinary research across natural and social sciences, in particular the incorporation of institutional, behavioural and ecological economics into environmental governance.

. . Teaching

Teaching is delivered to undergraduate as well as postgraduate students at several universities in Slovakia (Slovak University of Technology, Faculty of Management and Faculty of Natural Sciences at Comenius University, Catholic University in Ružomberok), as well as to international students and the general public at international events (training schools, discussion seminars, etc.).

Thematically the courses are built on the experience and expertise of CETIP members, and thematically cover the following disciplines and fields of science: ecological economics, behavioural experiment, multiple methods, global change and society, environmental governance, spatial and strategic planning, landscape planning and management, environmental policy, environmental management and planning, landscape ecology, etc.

The concept of the training course‘s multiple method approach has been to support intergenerational continuity and increase the research and collaborative capacity of doctoral and post-doctoral interdisciplinary researchers at the Slovak University of Technology and Comenius University Bratislava since 2011.

Training schools website 

.

CETIP was established in 2008 as a research centre of the Trans-disciplinary Studies of Institutions, Evolution and Policies associated with the Slovak Academy of Sciences, following the format of the Center for Behavior, Institutions and the Environment – CBIE (former Centre for the Study of Institutional Diversity (CSID)) at Arizona State University. CETIP emerged as the product of cooperation with Prof. Elinor Ostrom, in particularly during her visit to Slovakia in 2007 when she participated in the THEMES project and our team assisted with the common pool resource experiment conducted with subjects from 40 countries. CETIP subsequently evolved into the independent supra-regional collaborative research network of Central and Eastern Europe. It currently comprises approximately 60 researchers and PhD students from the EU Centre of Excellence SPECTRA at the Slovak University of Technology, the Faculty of Natural Sciences and Faculty of Management Comenius University Bratislava, the Slovak Academy of Sciences, the Catholic University of Ruzomberok, Ljublana University, the Economic University in Prague, and the University of Usti nad Labem, Czech Republic.

The competence of CETIP has been endorsed within several EU framework projects (IDARI, EUROCOOP, THEMES, RUBICODE, GOVERNAT, ECOFINDER, RESPONDER, H2020 projects INSPIRATION and SIMRA several COST projects), and active participation in numerous international research networks such as: the European Society for Ecological Economics (ESEE), Earth System Governance Project), since 2014 as a research centre of the Association of European School of Planning (AESOP) etc.

CETIPS’s main research activities focus on novel approaches in studying environmental governance in particular within the experimental platform Virtual Commons, established by the Center for the Study of Institutional Diversity (CSID), Arizona State University. CETIP under the 6FM Project Governat (associated project of ESG) participated in field experiments with common pool resources (2009-2011).

Under the partnership with Earth System Governance, CETIP contributed to global governance research within the completed Cost Action Transformation of Global Environmental Governance, which focused on cross-scale governance mechanisms, in particular regional inter-linkages (participation in several publications including Science, MIT press, etc.). In 2011 CETIP organized the international workshop: The Role of New Approaches in Studying Sustainable Governance: Experimental Research and Modelling of Governance Processes.

The frontiers of research interests are the analysis and prediction of individual and group behaviour in decision-making under the complexity and uncertainty of external disturbances. The complexity of the contemporary world, in particular the diversity of interests, multiple-decision actors, and the spatial dynamics of economic and natural processes have dramatically increased the probability of unexpected events and the vulnerability of traditional socio-ecological systems. Adaptation to those disturbances requires new governance and policy approaches.

Novel research challenges address SMART Governance a concept for analysing and managing collective action. Purposeful behavioural change, considering institutional, technological and ecological fit, is seen as an essential adaptation that builds effective, resilient institutional arrangements. The focus is on modelling collective actions under controlled conditions to reduce the uncertainty of information and the complexity of social, technological and biological factors. Frontiers research concerns also social innovations emergence and diffusion, transition to low carbon societies, and polycentric governance.

The concept of a multiple method approach (originally by Pottete, Janssen, Ostrom, 2010) has been developed by CETIP as a training course to support intergenerational continuity and increase the research and collaborative capacity of doctoral and post-doctoral interdisciplinary researchers. To date the course has been incorporated into the regular PhD program at two largest Slovak Universities: the Slovak University of Technology and Comenius University Bratislava. In October 2012 it became part of the European Society for Ecological Economics training series, which is a follow up program to the successful THEMES project series.

The products of academic cooperation include the Laboratory of Experimental Social Sciences (VEEL) established under SPECTRA+. The laboratory‘s mission is to increase the innovative potential of interdisciplinary natural-social science research, and the quality of graduate and postgraduate education. VEEL is a partner lab to Ostrom lab at Arizona State University, cooperating within the network of Virtual Commons.

CETIP organizes and facilitates research dialogue at the national and international level. Research visits, training schools, thematic workshops and conference sessions are key components listed in the session activities below. We plan to continue inviting important international researchers for short- and long-term research visits, as well as exchange visits for our researchers.

Website: www.cetip-network.eu