The 7th Annual South East European Doctoral Student Conference (DSC2012), organized by the South East European Research Centre (SEERC) was successfully held on the 24th and 25th of September 2012 at CITY College, International Faculty of the University of Sheffield, in Thessaloniki, Greece.
This year 134 papers were submitted in total in the three Research tracks. 106 of them were accepted as full papers and 71 were presented at the conference. The conference attracted more than 100 participants representing research from Albania, Algeria, Australia, Austria, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bangladesh, Bulgaria, China, Czech Republic, Cyprus, Egypt, Finland, France, F.Y.R Macedonia, Georgia, Germany, Ghana, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Morocco, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, South Africa, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey and United Kingdom.
A scientific committee of 87 academics reviewed the papers received.
Prof. Ketikidis, Chairman of the conference and Mr Zaharis, SEERC Director welcomed all the participants and opened the conference with the key note speech of Professor Robert Huggins, Chair of Economic Geography at Cardiff University’s School of City and Regional Planning and Director of its Centre for Advanced Studies on “Open Innovation, Network Capital, and Knowledge Flow”. Papers from the three Research Tracks were presented in five parallel sessions that were taking place during both days of the conference.
Two Workshops took place during the two days of the conference. Dr Tsigilis, visiting lecturer at the International Faculty of The University of Sheffield, delivered a workshop on "Measuring Observed and Unobserved Variables in Social Science Research" and Dr Kalyva, Honorary Senior Lecturer at the International Faculty of The University of Sheffield, delivered a workshop on “How to write a Thesis”. Both workshops were successful as most of the participants participated and their feedback was very positive.
One paper per Research Track (two papers from Research Track 3 were selected, as it covers a wider range of research) was selected to receive the best paper award. On behalf of the Programme Committee, the best paper award, was presented to Mr Michael Soucek, from The European University
Viadrina in Germany, for his paper titled “Market activity co-movements: Evidence from the S&P 500 index, crude oil and gold futures market” (Research Track 1), Mr Rustem Dautov, from The University of Sheffield-SEERC, for his paper titled ““An Ontology-driven Approach to Self-management in Cloud Application Platforms” (Authors: Rustem Dautov, Iraklis Paraskakis and Dimitrios Kourtesis) (Research Track 2), Mr James Williams, from The University of Sheffield, UK, for his paper titled “Optimisation of solar thermal panel use” (Authors: James Williams, Christopher Jones and Stephen Beck) (Research Track 3-Psychology field) and to Mr Granit Zela, from "Spiro Moisiu" Defence Academy, Tirana, Albania for his paper titled “Strategic and Doctrinal Framework of Western Balkan Countries” (also from Research Track 3 –Politics field).
The organisation of the Doctoral Student Conference (DSC 2012) for the 7th consecutive year allowed SEERC to bring researchers from different countries closer and to explore collaborative links between disciplines, for testing the ground for innovative ideas and for engaging the wider academic community.
