This project analyzes Jews in Eastern Christian communities and Eastern Christian sources, beyond the Byzantine context, namely, relations between Jews and Christian communities in the Middle East Central Asia, the Caucasus, Ethiopia, and South India. In order to obtain a truly accurate understanding of the dynamics of Jewish-Christian relations in the non-Latin world during the Middle Ages, these various regions and traditions must be studied together because they were all profoundly interconnected through the exchange and translation of texts, artistic motifs and techniques, and other goods, via long-distance trade along the “silk road”, the Mediterranean, and the Indian Ocean, which, of course, also entailed the movement and encounter of peoples, Jews and Christians among them. The research team endeavors to answer four intertwined questions: 1) what we can know about actual “real-life” interactions between Jews and a variety of Eastern Christian communities; 2) what were the meanings and functions of invented or rhetorical Jewish identities; 3) what is the significance of Jewish-Christian polemics, both written and visual, in lands or among communities where: a) there were supposedly few to no Jews, or Jewish identity was “invented”; b) there were Jewish and Christian communities who had the opportunity to be in regular contact with one another; 4) how were Christian stories, laws, biblical interpretations, or motifs in which Jews featured prominently, or Jewish tales and motifs about Christians transformed as they were transported from one cultural milieu to another? Because scholars have examined Jewish relations with Christians, and even Muslims primarily in the context of uneven power relationships; namely Jewish-Christian relations in Western Europe or Byzantium, or Jewish-Muslim relations in the Islamic one leaving Jewish-Christian relations untouched apart from shared communal structures, this project opens a new field.

This project aims to improve internationalization at universities in Europe through professional development of academics. We will design two courses to help participants to teach international students more effectively and to improve academic writing skills. As a result, participant teachers will devise new curricula of undergraduate and graduate courses for international students, prepare effective academic writing assignments for students and enhance own publication record through publishing in impacted journals and/or with reputed academic publishers. We will undertake pilot testing of both courses with at least 75 academics from two universities. Another project outcome will be a dedicated web portal with freely accessible materials for teachers in social sciences and humanities that will allow them to use innovative teaching methods and approaches and network with colleagues from other institutions. We will evaluate the course impact in at least two studies focusing particularly on the potential of reflective teaching and on the role of trust while facilitating changes in teaching and wider academic practice. Finally, under this project we will compile a plan for professionalizing higher education teaching in the region. The outcomes of our project will be disseminated to a number of institutions beyond the project consortium to increase internationalization and quality of education in Europe in general.To conclude, please allow us to summarize the main strengths of our project as we can see them. This project builds upon a survey of needs undertaken at two project partners for which the new curricula will be designed and where they will be tested before offering them to other beneficiaries teams up institutions that are leaders in internationalization with those committed to increase internationalization and quality of learning in order to allow tangible synergic effects from cooperation produces high-quality outcomes: curricula of two courses, a dedicated portal with teaching and learning materials and a cooperation plan that can be accessed easily and for free by a variety of users including university teachers, students, university managers, educational developers, learning technologists, etc.encourages symbiosis between research (including that from cognitive sciences) and teaching, which are two key responsibilities of academics, yet too often considered separatelyincludes two reputed associated partners outside the project consortium. Each of them has a number of institutional members that can directly benefit from this projectfocuses on areas that can be directly linked to enhanced student and staff mobility evaluates its outcomes using scientific methods of data collection, data analysis and presentation, similarly as it has been done in impacted peer reviewed publications innovates for a wide circle of European institutions of higher education based on the latest findings from pedagogical research.References Adamová, Ľ, Muráriková, P, eds. (2013) Innovating Teaching and Learning. Reports from University Lecturers. Budrich UnipressErasmus+ in numbers 2016. European Comm, 2017 http://ec.europa.eu/programmes/erasmus-plus/about/statistics_en,Handal, G (1999) Consultation Using Critical Friends. New Directions for Teaching and Learning 79, 59-70Knight, P T, Trowler, P R (2000) Department-level cultures and the improvement of learning and teaching. Studies in HE, 25(1) 69-83Kreber, C (2004) An analysis of two models of reflection and their implications for educational development. International Journal for Academic Development 9(1) 29-51Lave, J, Wenger, E (1991) Situated Learning. Legitimate peripheral participation, Cambridge: University of CambridgeMezirow, J (1999) Transformative Dimensions of Adult Learning. San Francisco: Josey-BassPleschová, G, McAlpine, L (2016) Helping teachers to focus on learning and reflect on their teaching: What role does teaching context play? Studies in Educational Evaluation 48,1-9Pleschová, G. Simon, A, eds. (2018) Early Career Academics Reflections on Learning to Teach in Central Europe. Staff and Educational Development AssociationRoxå, T,Mårtensson, K (2009) Significant conversations and significant networks -exploring the backstage of the teaching arena. Studies in HE 34(5) 547-559, (2014) Higher education commons – a framework for comparison of midlevel units in higher education organizations, European Journal of HE 4(4) 303-316Schön, D A (1983) The Reflective Practitioner. How Professionals Think In Action. Basic Books.Šeďová, K, Švaříček, R, Sedláčková, J, Čejková, I, Šmardová, A, Novotný, P, Zounek, J (2016) Beginning University Teachers and Their Approaches to Teaching and Professional Self-Perception. Studia Paedagogica, 21(1) 9-34Van Waes, S, Van Bossche, P, Moolenaar, N, Stes, A, Petegem, P (2015) Uncovering changes in university teachers’ professional networks during an instructional development program. Studies in EduE 46,11-28

Networks define our life, being essential to cell biology, communications, social and economic systems, and impacting virtually all areas of science and technology. The aim of this proposal is to engage leading experts in network science and graph theory to build a mathematically sound theory of dynamical networks, which will be transformative to our understanding of complex systems, with applications in multiple disciplines. Both fields have made major conceptual advances in the past decade: network science has offered a data-based basic topological description of complex networks, and has started to address the inherently dynamical nature of real networks, their reconstruction and control; in mathematics we have seen major advances in graph limit theory, the local-global dichotomy in observation, and promising steps in the theory of graphs with intermediate degrees, that capture real networks. While these concepts offer different formalisms to capture the same underlying reality, there has been no conversation between the two communities, limiting our understanding of real networks. The proposed research aims to build on these advances to construct a coherent theory of dynamical networks, and to exploit its applications and predictive power to various real systems. We plan to offer a sound mathematical foundation of network science, helping us better analyze, predict and control the behavior of real networks. It will benefit mathematics in leading to an enriched, robust graph limit theory, with exciting applications in multiple areas of mathematics. To enhance the wider impact of the proposed mathematical advances, we plan to conduct a permanent conversation with experts from different domains that encounter and explore real networks, from cell biology to brain science and transportation and communication networks, inspiring with novel questions and helping the application of our advances in these domains.