AES youth contests serve to find out young scholars with the considerable potential in European studies and to encourage their further research. Until now we have held four competitions, three of them were organized with the support of the Jean Monnet activities of the ERASMUS+ Program.

The first contest of academic articles written by authors under the age of 35 took place in the beginning of 2017, it was a part of a broad program set up to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the association. The winners and laureates were invited to attend an academic conference in the Voronezh State University, they were officially recognized at the closing ceremony.

The second contest started in autumn 2018. The international jury announced winners and laureates in January 2019. The authors of the best articles were invited for a training trip to Brussels, were they visited EU institutions, the College of Europe in Bruges and Egmont Royal institute for international relations. The tour was arranged by the EU Delegation to Russia. The winner’s articles were published in the peer review academic journal “Sovremennaya Evropa” (Contemporary Europe).

We decided to hold two events in 2020: a traditional selection of articles and the first assessment of lager academic papers, namely chapters from masters’ and PhD dissertations in progress. The AES Bureau proceeded from the assumption that the submission of a large text in the competition would galvanize young researchers’ creative activity and encourage them to improve the quality of the entire dissertation in close cooperation with their academic advisers. This was of particular relevance for the students who were to complete their postgraduate master’s degree programs and to defend their dissertations next summer. To this end, the competition was announced in January – prior to the start of the second semester.

In March the jury unveiled the names of the selected finalists for the two contests. MGIMO-University, the European University at St.-Petersburg and the Nizhny Novgorod State University reproduced this EAS news release on their websites. The best articles were again published in the “Sovremennaya Evropa” journal included in the Scopus list second quartile (No.2, 2020 and No.4, 2020). In October 2020 the winners participated in an online training for young researchers, organized by the EU Delegation to Russia in partnership with the College of Europe.