The Summer School

The ODYSSEUS network organises a summer school on immigration and asylum law and policy in Europe. The speakers and experts come from varied academic and professional backgrounds: Member States, institutions and international organisations.

Objectives

The Summer School has been carefully designed and developed to provide participants with a comprehensive understanding of the immigration and asylum policy of the EU from a legal perspective.

In addition to the content of the taught classes, the course also provides an excellent opportunity to spend an intellectually stimulating fortnight among a group of around one hundred fellow participants specialised in the area of asylum and immigration from all over Europe.

Organisation

The programme is organised by the Odysseus Network for Legal Studies on Immigration and Asylum in Europe, which was founded in 1999 with the support of the European Commission and is coordinated by the Institute for European Studies of the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB).

The setting of the Summer School in Brussels, the home of the European institutions, creates a unique environment that facilitates participants’ deeper engagement with the institutions.

The classes are taught by academics from the universities cooperating in the Odysseus Network, which is represented in all EU Member States, and by high-ranking officials from the European Institutions, particularly the European Commission. The Summer School programme is offered in English or in French. Classes are taught separately, with participants able to indicate their language preference in advance.

Participants

Participants in the Summer School typically include PhD and graduate students, researchers, lecturers, EU and Member State officials, representatives from NGOs and International Organisations, lawyers, judges, social workers and more.

Languages

Participants can choose to follow either the English-language stream or the French-language stream of the Summer School. Participants will attend all classes in the language indicated in their application, with the exception of courses given by high officials of the EU which will be exclusively taught in English. Both streams cover the same set of class topics, and participants from both streams will be able to socialise together during the extracurricular activities.