Summer School 2025
– Project “GSC-econ”: Germany, the EU, and the South Caucasus – an economic perspective –
About the project
The project’s objective is to establish strategic partnerships for teaching and research in the field of economics and business administration, business law as well as intercultural communication, between HTWK Leipzig and two renowned universities in the Southern Caucasus: Armenian State University of Economics (ASUE) in Armenia and Caucasus University (CU) in Georgia. HTWK Leipzig has already established a comprehensive network of academic collaborations with universities in Eastern Europe. The strategic development of the recently established new links of cooperation with the aforementioned two institutions in the Southern Caucasus region would serve to enhance and diversify this network. The organization of a trilateral summer school at HTWK Leipzig on the topic “Macroeconomics, Trade and Intercultural Business: Germany and the Southern Caucasus” is the core of the project as a practical measure to promote cooperation and strengthen the new partnerships and HTWK’s internationalization. The measure includes the exchange of students, professors and administrative staff. The project fits well into HTWK’s internationalization strategy and is planned to end with the formulation of specific milestones and agreements for the establishment of a systematic framework for the future exchange of students and staff between HTWK Leipzig and both project partners.
The project (funded by the DAAD UAS International program) starts on 01/06/2025 and ends on 31/12/2025.
The summer school
The trilateral summer school “Macroeconomics, Trade and Intercultural Business: Germany and the Southern Caucasus” is the core measure of the project. The summer school expected to contribute to HTWK’s internationalization and to serve as a model for further activities to internationalize teaching at HTWK Leipzig, with the objective of intensifying international exchange and increasing the numbers of student and staff mobilities.
Students and staff from Armenian State University of Economics, Caucasus University and HTWK Leipzig will take part at the summer school. In total, 25-30 students are expected to take part.
The summer school consists of two parts
- Part 1 (online) from → Wed 17/09/2025 to → Fri 19/09/2025.
- Part 2 (HTWK Leipzig) from → Mon 22/09/2025 to → Fri 26/09/2025.
Program
Lecturers at the summer school
Bodo Sturm has been a professor of economics and quantitative methods at Leipzig University of Applied Sciences (HTWK Leipzig) and a research associate at the ZEW – Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research in Mannheim since 2009. He studied economics at Humboldt University of Berlin and the University of Tübingen. From 1999 to 2005, he was a research associate at the Chair of Economic Policy at the Faculty of Economics at Otto von Guericke University Magdeburg, where he received his doctorate in 2005. From 2005 to 2009, he was a research associate at ZEW Mannheim in the Research Department "Environmental and Resource Economics, Environmental Management." In his research, he looks at how environmental regulations are designed and the incentive problems in international environmental policy. He also works in experimental economics.
Katharina Gelbrich has been Professor of ‘Law, in particular Private Commercial Law’ at Leipzig University of Applied Sciences (HTWK Leipzig) since 2023. From 2017 to 2022, she was a research assistant at the Chair of Civil Law, Civil Procedure and Commercial Law under Prof. Dr. Caroline Meller-Hannich at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg. Prior to this, she worked for two years as a lawyer at the law firm Flöther & Wissing in the field of restructuring and insolvency administration. She passed her first state law examination in 2011 in Saxony-Anhalt and her second state law examination in 2014 in Saxony. In between, she completed her doctorate in the field of civil procedural law as part of the graduate programme of the state of Saxony-Anhalt.
Tatevik Vardanyan is a lecturer at the Armenian State University of Economics (ASUE), where she teaches courses in international economics, transport economics, and logistics. She holds a PhD in Economics and has extensive experience in research, teaching, and project coordination. Her academic and policy work focuses on labor market analysis, digital transformation, economic integration, and logistics performance in Armenia and the broader Eurasian region. Dr. Vardanyan is also the Head of the Career Center at ASUE and has been involved in numerous international collaborations, including projects funded by the European Union, UN Women, and UNESCO. She actively participates in conferences and summer schools across Europe, and her current research explores mechanisms to enhance international trade competitiveness and supply chain resilience in emerging economies.
Ani Tavartkiladze is the Deputy Director of the International Relations Department of the Caucasus University (CU), Georgia. She is responsible on University’s international partnerships, for the past 9 years has been the Institutional Coordinator of the Erasmus+ KA 171 and KA 131 projects, coordinates different short-term programs, summer schools and internationalization as a University strategy in general and all the actions related to this process.
Christine Orlowski has been a lecturer in English and Intercultural Communication at HTWK Leipzig since 2018. She has held a teaching position at the University of Applied Sciences Zwickau (WHZ) since 2020 with a focus on cultural globalisation and international management. She teaches and collaborates with students from many different countries to foster synergy and discovery in her classroom. She completed her Masters in Communication Studies at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, where she studied interpersonal and intercultural communication among international students at a Canadian university and how these experiences influence their identity formation in relation to the concept of 'Belonging'. Christine Orlowski has always been passionate about working with students and has led many workshops with groups of 5 to 100 people, ranging from leadership development to inclusivity and cultural awareness.
This list will be updated.
Useful links for the summer school
Meetings during the project
We will report about the meetings during the project here.
