Building Bioethics Capacities in Education and Doctoral Training: A Collaborative Network among Moldova, Romania and Switzerland

This collaborative network aims to build bioethics teaching and research capacities particularly in Moldova and also in Romania with the support of its partner in Switzerland. For the three partners, this collaboration stands to provide much needed opportunity to network and exchange bioethics knowledge between Western and Eastern European countries. Each partner brings certain areas of expertise in bioethics that the other will benefit from. In order to ensure that we reach our goal, five specific objectives are delineated for this collaborative network. These objectives will be reached through the design and implementation of six activities as part of the partnership.  The funding received from the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) for this Scopes project is for a duration of 24 months (2015-2017).

Objectives

1)  Networking opportunities for young scholars to establish contacts and long-term partnerships;

2) Modernization and coordination of the basic curricula of theoretical and applied bioethics training at the bachelor’s level for medical students, as well as Master’s and PhD students from other disciplines. This development, modernization and harmonization to the European standards of the Bioethics courses is especially important for the East European partners;

3) Improvement of teaching and training in Medical ethics/Bioethics through cutting edge teaching skills and teaching methodologies in light of the multicultural environment and developing technologies;

4) Transferring current research methodology in empirical bioethics and introducing  new approaches by training the next generation of young scholars from the Eastern European regions (support of young scientists, PhD and post-doctoral students); and

5) Improve the research infrastructure of our partners from Eastern Europe in order to continue and expand the teaching and research capacities gained through this collaboration.

Institute for Biomedical Ethics (IBMB), University of Basel
Department of Philosophy and Bioethics, “N. Testemitanu” Pharmacy and Medicine University of Chisinau
Research Centre in Applied Ethics (CCEA), Faculty of Philosophy, University of Bucharest