At the French-Spanish Frontier

Ekaterina Mikhailova, postgraduate student at the Department for Spatial Development and Regional Studies in the School of Public Administration at HSE’s Social Sciences Faculty, received a scholarship from the EU international academic mobility project Triple I (Integration, Interaction, and Institutions).

Thanks to the scholarship, Ekaterina was on an internship at the University of Deusto (San Sebastian, Spain) Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, studying Business Competitiveness and Economic Development from August 22, 2013, to July 4, 2014. She is writing a thesis on ‘Administrating socio-economic development on transfrontier territories in Russia’.

The internship location – University of Deusto, San Sebastian campus in Gipuzkoa province – was chosen for three reasons: it has a strong research centre (the Orkestra Institute of Territorial Competitiveness); the University’s steady reputation as one of the best universities in Europe and Spain; and the opportunity to study in a frontier region of the Basque Country.

The programme included courses on research methods and territorial competitiveness administration, as well as Spanish language courses. Ekaterina helped organizing the 8th International Seminar on Regional Innovative Policies, organized two research seminars on the topic of her thesis, and worked on the text of the thesis.

As a result of the internship, Ekaterina wrote four articles in English. She also mastered DeDoose software for quantitative analysis of interviews and established contacts with lecturers and researchers from Europe, Latin America, USA, Australia and the Middle East. Ekaterina received a B1 certificate of proficiency in Spanish and explored the colourful Basque Country on both sides of the Spanish-French border.