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Project title: Gender Quotas and the Democratic Quality of Local Decision-Making Processes in Clientelistic Regimes Project Acronym: GenderQuotas Country: Albania The text file titled "Council Transcripts 2016" refers to the transcripts of council meetings held during August - December 2016. The text file "Council Transcripts 2018" refers to the transcripts of council meetings held during August - December 2018. The study was conducted in the councils of Durrës, Fier, Korçë, Kukës, Librazhd, Malësi e Madhe, Mat, Pukë, Sarandë, Tiranë, Ura Vajgurore. Language: Albanian Organization supporting fieldwork: Women's Network Equality in Decision-Making (http://www.platformagjinore.al/) The first wave of data collection (August - December 2016) was funded by United Nations Development Programme – Albania, contract number ALB-092-2016. The second round of data collection (August - December 2018) was funded by the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 792969.

The culmination of dialogue between religious communities is holding interreligious conferences. Until now, five such meetings were held in Macedonia, of which, the first one was at state level and it came as a result of the ethnic war in 2001, initiated by the President of the country and helped by the relevant researchers from the scope of the dialogue; the second one was a regional summit where the leaders of Southeast European countries attended; whereas, the last three conferences were at world level and were supported by Macedonian Government. In this research, it was used the descriptive method, relevant reports and results of a survey of the Institute for Democracy regarding interreligious dialogue were analyzed, whereas the interview was used as a technique. The hypothesis of this research is focused on the success of these conferences regarding population. The results show that despite the fact that these conferences have become part of government programs and the tradition for their organization has already been formed, they have deviated from their essence and initial vision, to be a catalyst of peace in the country and the region.

We live in an era where the university system is undergoing great changes owing to developments in financing policies and research priorities, as well as changes in the society in which this system is embedded. This change toward a more market-oriented university, which also has immediate effects in academic peripheries such as the Balkans, the Middle East, or South-East Asia, is of great influence for the pedagogical practice of "less profitable" academic areas such as the Humanities: philosophy, languages, sociology, anthropology, history. Because of the absence of a historically grounded establishment of the Humanities, academic peripheries, usually accompanied by a weak civil society infrastructure, seem to offer the most fertile ground for rethinking the Humanities, their pedagogical practice, and their politics, as well as the greatest threats, such as the ongoing capitalization of research, and profitability as the norm of educational achievement. The sprawling presence of for-profit universities and in academic peripheries such as Albania and Kosovo is indicative of this problematic, as are consistent underfunding of universities and the relentless budget cuts in American and English, and to a lesser extent European, universities. Motivations for this ongoing attack on the university are often driven by a political system or a politics with an aggressive stance to critical thought.