The international Programme "Power and Region in a Multipolar Order» (PRIMO) was a Marie Curie Initial Training Network funded by the European Commission and consisted of universities from Brazil, China, Germany, India, Portugal, Russia, South Africa, Turkey and the UK, as well as non-academic institutions.
The Marie Curie program aims to increase the human role in research, increasing the number of young researchers and experts. The PRIMO project has contributed to the establishment and strengthening of international research relations, creating a network of efficient international scientific collaboration between universities and research organizations from around the world. PRIMO was one of the few Marie Curie programs received support in the field of humanities.
The international program has focused on the role of regional powers such as Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) in international politics and the global economy. It was a postgraduate training at the PRIMO Universities, combining integrated training workshops and internship opportunities across the network with career opportunities in academia or the private sector. The PRIMO project was conducted in 2013-2017.
PRIMO united leading Universities in national education systems with significant positions in international rankings:
- University of Hamburg, Germany (coordinator)
- University of Oxford, UK
- German Institute of Global and Area Studies, Hamburg, Germany
- Institute of Social Sciences, University of Lisbon, Portugal
- Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
- Saint Petersburg State University, Russia
- Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, India
- Fudan University, Shanghai, China
- University of Stellenbosch, South Africa
- Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey
The PRIMO full partner from business was Jaguar Land Rover.
The PRIMO associated partners were Deutsche Bank, Hamburg Chamber of Commerce, and European Council on Foreign Relations.
In the PRIMO framework, the World Economy Department, St. Petersburg State University has conducted research on ‘Emerging powers in the IMF and the WTO: group hegemony, multilateral cooperation or Westphalian reassertion?’.
Martin Pioch, a German citizen, has been employed as a trainee researcher at St. Petersburg State University from October 15, 2014 till September 30, 2017 and has presented several papers for peer reviewed journals and a Ph.D. thesis at the end of the project. Under PRIMO, St. Petersburg State University organized international research methods and outreach workshops on ‘The role of quantitative data in qualitative research on PRIMO’ (April 20-24, 2015) and ‘How to practice global IR?’ (June 26-28, 2017). In the framework of the project, St. Petersburg State University provided public lectures of foreign professors and experts as well as organized sessions and round tables at international conferences.
Young researchers from foreign universities have undertaken academic secondments at the World Economy Department: Miklos Lazar (Marie Curie Fellow at Jaguar Land Rover
and D.Phil. Student from the University of Oxford), Eleonora Tafuro Ambrosetti (PhD student from Middle East Technical University), and Alison Lantukh (PhD student from Catholic University of Rio de Janeiro). Under the PRIMO, professors from St. Petersburg State University have participated in international conferences and workshops in Belgium, the United Kingdom, Germany, China, and the USA.
On 29 May 2018, Martin Pioch defended his dissertation “Emerging economies cooperation in the global governance: the BRICS in international trade and the WTO” for the degree of Candidate of Economic Sciences at St. Petersburg State University. It was the first defense on International Economics according to new rules of St. Petersburg State University. The supervisor was Prof. Sergei Sutyrin. Martin Pioch was the first young researcher from PRIMO defended his thesis and proved the success of St. Petersburg State University involvement into the project.
The coordinator of PRIMO project and scientist in charge at St. Petersburg State University was Dr. Alexandra Koval, a.koval@spbu.ru.
PRIMO website: www.primo-itn.eu.
