CERISE (Centre for Russian International Socio-Political and Economic Studies) was founded in 2001. Our mission is to study Russia's international relations, socio-political evolution and economic development and to disseminate the study results to academia, policymakers and the wider public in order to improve our understanding of this strategically important country.

CERISE and its team
CERISE started its activities in late 2001. It is designed to be an interdisciplinary research institute that concentrates on Russia and on transition in general. In the first three years CERISE has concentrated on economic analysis and research, although there was still some activity on other fields too. We also not neglected our societal responsibilities and have been relatively active in this field. While at the start in 2001 there was only Koen Schoors, the team has grown to include Bruno Merlevede and Alexei Karas as researchers. There is also a growing number of affiliated researchers, such as Bas Van Aarle, Hedwig De Smaele and others.

Focus
Research of CERISE has focussed on the problems of economic transition in CIS-countries, among which Russia is the largest country, and various aspects of EU-enlargement. Different specific research projects were initiated. This resulted in number of published papers and a large pipe-line of future research.

This is the new Cerise site. There are things that will change for the better in the near future. (previewed best in Firefox) The old site is still online, just click here.