Editorial

Dear Reader,

as summer arrives, the IEE looks back at an exciting and multifaced first half of 2022. With vanishing Corona restrictions, the IEE staff was able to gradually return to the office, teach in person and to even organize real face-to-face meetings.

For example, the IEE team organised the long-anticipated first annual meeting of the ADAPTED network in Bochum, where all participants enjoyed both the presentations of the different research projects and the informal get-together. In this Newsletter, one of the researchers, Natalia Zakharchenko, and her fellow PhD researchers tell about their impressions of the first ADAPTED meeting in more detail, and we report on the further implementation of ADAPTED and the midterm meeting with the EU officer.

In February, the graduation of our last MADM cohort took place during a very nice ceremony at the Ruhr-University Bochum. The students, who studied the whole programme under Corona conditions, proved again to have been a high-performing, very kind and cohesive group. In this context, one of the graduates, Pamela Cruz, reports on her personal experience within her MADM studies. In May, we were able to welcome the first students of our new MADM cohort at the University of the Western Cape in Cape Town, as the new Corona regulations in South Africa allow students to return to campus as well.

Further, we are pleased to report on two new scholarship holders at the South African-German Centre for Development Research, who also opted to do the MADM as a second degree together with two fellow students who are already in the second year of their studies. Additionally, our longtime partner, Kevin Davel, owner of the B&B Little Scotia, gives a short satirical review of the Corona lockdown in South Africa and his own experience in this regard.

Additionally, we are happy to present a variety of new research publications, ranging from Work and Education Outcomes of Syrian Refugees in Jordan, to Productivity Analysis and Employment Effects of Marigold Cultivation in Jammu, India, to Civic engagement and energy transition in the Nordic-Baltic Sea Region, to the question of How resilient are wine tourism destinations to health-related security threats. We hope you enjoy this edition of the IEE Newsletter!

Sincerely,