Creating transdisciplinary and transnational spaces of mutual learning and participative research is the interest of APPEAR. The programme has established 17 academic partnerships with institutions across Latin America, Africa and Asia since its inception in 2009. The recent APPEAR publication describes these examples of participative and transcultural knowledge production. As Master’s and PhD scholarships are of intrinsic value for a collaborative programme like APPEAR five scholarship holders wrote about the experiences during their studies in Austria. In addition two of the contributions for the publications have been published in the latest OeAD news.
Kalkidan Negash Obse is a Lecturer of African Union Law and Human Rights at Addis Ababa University (AAU) and completed his PhD at the University of Graz in Austria. He received his LLB (distinction) from Addis Ababa University and LLM (valedictorian, summa cum laude) from St. Thomas University in Florida, USA. Before starting his doctoral study in Austria, Kalkidan served as Acting Director of the Center for Human Rights at Addis Ababa University and as legal advisor to the University. He was recently awarded a doctoral scholarship by The Hague Academy of International Law which permitted him to complete a research stay at the Academy. Kalkidan has several publications on African Union Law with his most recent publication titled: “The Arab Spring and the Question of Legality of Democratic Revolution in Theory and Practice”, Leiden Journal of International Law.