Collaborative Online and Offline Research Platform – COORP

COORP Aim and Objectives

The overall objective of COORP is to assist in the integration of the Albanian academic community into the international community of researchers; to facilitate networking opportunities and respond efficiently to calls for research projects in European programs and other funding schemes for Social Science Research in Albania.

COORP specific objectives are to:

Empower Albanian researchers by facilitating the connection and interoperability among those who share similar research perspectives in Albania and beyond;
Increase collaboration among public and private universities as well as other research centres to jointly access funding sources;
Increase skills and capacities of researches/academic institutions to access national and international research funding sources.

Supported by PERFORM

COORP is supported by PERFORM - Performing and Responsive Social Sciences – a project of Swiss Agency for Development and Cooperation implemented by HELVETAS Swiss Intercooperation and the University of Fribourg.

PERFORM focuses on strengthening the relevance of social sciences for socio-economic and political reform processes. It collaborates closely with national research systems in Albania and Serbia with the option of being extended to other countries in the Western Balkans in the future.

Learn more about PERFORM at www.perform.network.

COORP Expected Results

COORP seeks to achieve the following results:

Create connections with regional and European research centres active in H2020 and in other European Research Area activities;
Support to Albanian research community for H2020 application process and other research grant applications;
Support to identify and connect Social Science Researchers or other related fields with the academic diaspora;
Create a sustainable network of collaboration among Albanian researchers, empowered by the online COORP platform;
Update the database of researchers, assets and other instruments Albania may have and make them available via online COORP platform;
Increase the participation rate, and eventually the success rate of the Albania research community in the international funding opportunities.

The COORP Initiative

The initiative for COORP came jointly by two researchers and project managers working in higher education sector in Albania and in South East Europe, namely Fabjan Lashi, coming from the information technology area, and Blerjana Bino, from social sciences. Drawing from the challenges faced by the research community in Albania and the necessity to join forces across disciplines in order to achieve competitive advantage in European research funding, Fabjan and Blerjana proposed to PERFORM the establishment of a functional Collaborative On-Line & Off-line Research Platform (COORP). The principles of the initiative are: first, a culture of openness, knowledge-sharing and cooperation between universities, research centres and other relevant stakeholders in higher education and research in Albania; and second, the continuous pursuit towards achieving not only excellence and quality of research, but also relevance for the development of the Albanian society.

Fabjan Lashi on COORP:

“We seek to provide an online platform that will facilitate meet and match opportunities for researchers in Albania as well as networking and cooperation with academic diaspora and researchers from across South East Europe and European Union”.

Blerjana Bino on COORP:

“We are looking forward to work with a core group of proactive, motivated and engaged researchers that could also drive their colleagues, research centres, departments and institutions towards opening up to the European Research Area with the ultimate goal of achieving excellency, internationalization and better academic environments for researchers, lecturers and students”.

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