The Institute Is established to focus primarily on current world affairs considering them within their historical context and with respect to their immediate application. The connection between events and people along with their long term effects upon stability, welfare and international cooperation and understanding comprise the overall aim of the IDGA. The Institute organizes conferences and meetings among policy makers, diplomats and visiting dignitaries for the purpose of enhancing the understanding of complex issues and facilitating sincere communication and open dialogue. The Institute participates also in the overall academic life of the American College of Greece with organization of seminars and workshops for students and faculty and by offering courses on selected curricula.
The IDGA is a center of scholarship in public and international affairs. Within the auspices of its work the Institute sponsors the following 5 research centers and programs and one open Forum. These focus on public affairs with particular emphasis on areas close to the Eastern Mediterranean basin and ranging from public policy applications to the understanding of regional complexities and obstacles faced in the process of political transition. The Institute’s programs react to international events and attempt to influence the domestic environment towards understanding the multiple texture of an unfolding new global reality.
Eurasian Studies Workshop
The Eurasian Studies Workshop, in conjunction with the Institute of Diplomacy and Global Affairs, bridges the gap between the world of ideas and the world of public affairs by bringing scholars and governmental specialists together to discuss political, social, and economic issues affecting Russia and other successor states to the Soviet Union, seeking always to place these issues within their historical context. The Eurasian Studies Workshop is a non-partisan institution committed to improving Greek expertise and knowledge about this wide region. The Workshop organizes seminars, working sessions, briefings, and conferences featuring prominent scholars and policymakers from the West, Russia, and other successor states to the Soviet Union with experience in shaping West-Russian policy.
East European Studies Program
The East European Studies Program provides a non-partisan forum for bringing historical and contemporary understanding of the former communist states of Eastern Europe and the Baltics to the attention of students, scholars and other non-academic interested parties. The EESP organizes seminars, conferences, workshops and briefings featuring prominent scholars and policymakers from this country, the EU, the US and Eastern Europe with experience in shaping Western.-Eastern European policy
West Balkans and Middle East Democratic Politics Center
The Democratic Politics Center was created to support research on democratic political processes and institutions, primarily but not exclusively in the contemporary western Eurasian setting. The Center's research program focuses particularly on the relationship between democratic ideals and democratic practice; its aim is to encourage analysis of contemporary developments in the countries of the western Balkans and the Muslim Near East. Applications of democratic procedures and the difficulties of establishing democratic polities is its major focus of attention.
The Center aims to host distinguished visiting scholars and graduate students. These visiting fellows will be facilitated to pursue their own research projects, participate in courses and colloquia, and contribute to the intellectual life of the Center and of the College. The Center also sponsors visiting speakers and occasional conferences, and provides support for American College of Greece faculty members and students whose research sheds light on fundamental issues of democratic governance.
Energy Security and International Markets Program
The aim of the Program is to promote dialogue between consumers and producers, government and industry, and academics and decisions makers in order to gain a more informed understanding of the factors that influence international energy markets. Research will be in time carried out to cover the economics of petroleum and oil as well as the politics of energy, the international relations of producing and consuming nations
Ambassadors Forum
This is a novel activity in Academia and aims to bring together diplomatic representatives from various countries and regions to exchange open, free and off the record views about overall global or peripheral developments and about issues pertaining to their countries concerns. The Forum may organize talks by ambassadors to selected audiences of academics, policy makers and business people so that understanding can be enhanced and misconceptions marginalized. Based on the ambassadors preference open forums can be organized with the participation of students, the wider public and media for a wider understanding of each different country’s objectives and particular national interest.
Political Risk Analysis Workshop
Global markets will continue to function and become all the more powerful. Businesses will go on reaching for new manufacturing and sales opportunities in countries far from their home base and experience and they will continue to be the frontrunners of globalisation. Although companies are making their private estimations about profitability on various fields of enterpeneurial endeavour it is still difficult to incorporate political risk in their calculations. The range of outcomes that might arise from political events and developments is enormous and may influence decisively their aims and profit perspectives.
Student of the workshop will be acquainted with tools of analysis and prediction with particular emphasis to the evaluation of actions, statements and preferences of leaders, parties, and factions, as well as their capacity to execute their stated policies when confronted with internal and external challenges. They will recognize that changes in the regulatory environment, local attitudes to corporate governance, reaction to international competition, labour laws, and withholding and other taxes may all be influenced by hard to discern shifts in the political landscape.
Contribution to College Academic Life
The Institute aims to enhance the possibilities for the students of the College to come into contact with ideas and perspectives on international affairs hitherto unavailable from their existing curriculum. For this purpose special lectures can be organized, workshops with interested students can be set up and seminars can be conducted. Credits can be awarded (in the future), on the basis of the College curriculum requirements and objectives.
Specific activities on selected policy themes can be set up for the purpose of testing students’ abilities to analyze and understand complex phenomena and produce papers synthesizing various aspects of today’s constantly shifting global environment. Below are some of the themes that could be incorporated in the various curricula or serve as the basis of public lectures, seminars or symposia:
Institute of Diplomacy and Global Affairs
Eurasian Studies Workshop
East European Studies Program
West Balkans and Middle East
Democratic Politics Center
Energy Security and International
Political Risk Analysis Workshop
Markets Program
Ambassadors Forum
The Institute’s premises are located at the center of Athens’ old town, Plaka, very close to the historic Constitution (Syntagma) Square. First Director of the Institute is the former Minister of Trade, Industry, Energy, Technology and Culture and recognized scholar Mr. Andreas Andrianopoulos.
6 Gravias Street GR-153 42 Aghia Paraskevi Athens, Greece Phone: +30 210 600 9800 Center of Post-Lyceum Education 
