����Ӱ��

Tallinn Summer School offers a new course this year entitled "Global Humanitarian Governance and Its Critics." The course will examine contemporary global humanitarian governance and focus on the attempt to govern individuals and human collectives with the purpose of preserving life and reducing human suffering.

Humanitarian norms have arguably become the key frame through which the multifarious actors of the world evaluate each other’s legitimacy. The emerging humanitarian paradigm is becoming an essential expression of what is meant by international community and world order.

The compassion for the distant other – e.g. in emergency aid, disaster relief, international social work, or crisis management – is fundamentally about bodily pain. Humanitarian mobilization and practice concerns itself mainly with the different sentiments of compassion that arise from the suffering of individuals. In this sense, the historical construction of suffering is a vital topic in the humanitarian studies: What types of suffering are recognized as worthy of humanitarian response? How do global emergency situations –varying from natural disasters to industrial accidents to threats of pandemic proportions– lead to different global mobilizations?

In this context it is important to recognize that there are a myriad of different types of organizations working in the humanitarian field. These include state agencies, international institutions, major professional NGO’s, and agencies with religious affiliations. The Summer School course overviews different humanitarian practices and examines how the work inter-twines with the major background traditions and with political power.

The course will take place in Tallinn University from 23-26 July 2013 and upon full participation, the participants will receive 4 ECTS. In addition to Tallinn University's International Relations and European Studies professor, Mika Aaltola, researchers from Tampere University, the Finnish Institute of International Affairs, the University of Jyväskylä and the University of Helsinki will deliver lectures and seminars.

More information about the course and registration is available .

Mika Aaltola

This summer, Tallinn University’s international summer school, the “Tallinn Summer School”, takes place from 15 July to 2 August. In 2013 the programme focuses mainly on creativity, offering courses from interpreting film language to designing serious games; from poetry writing to creative psychotherapy and from photography to creative entrepreneurship. In addition, it is possible to learn six languages, or delve into topics related to international law, business, social work, social media or African cultures.

This year will mark the eighth consecutive Tallinn Summer School. The number of summer school students has constantly been growing. In 2012 there were 300 participants who attended from 50 countries.

Further information about Tallinn Summer School can be found on the  as well as on the .