Graduate Department of European Studies was founded in 1999 along with the launching of the MA in European Union Studies Programme. Department’s activities have been extended with the introduction of the MA Non-thesis programme from the 2000-2001 academic year onwards. In the 2002-2003 academic year, a doctoral programme in EU studies was established, which is currently the only one in the Aegean Region and among the few in Turkey. The graduate programmes focus on the main dimensions of the European integration, namely, economic, political, judicial and institutional. Due to the multidisciplinary nature of the European Studies, the Department is founded under the Graduate School of Social Sciences, which deals with the coordination of all postgraduate programmes in social sciences offered by the University. The multidisciplinary nature of the EU graduate programmes also requires the teaching staff to be composed of academics from various departments of the University. Thus, a close collaboration with other faculties and departments is welcomed. The students are expected to specialise by means of a dissertation or thesis. Accordingly, during the first two semesters of both MA and PhD programmes, students are required to take core and elective courses, and then to develop their dissertation or thesis from the third semester onwards. The MA Non-thesis Programme has been set up as evening classes to meet the expectations of students actively involved in professional life. Accordingly, although the number and content of the courses to be taken under the non-thesis programme do not differ widely from the regular MA programme, it takes students one more semester to attend all the necessary courses. During the fourth semester, students prepare their projects, which are mainly implementation-oriented. Besides the regular postgraduate education activities, the department is also involved in extracurricular activities such as academic workshops, conferences and civil society-oriented education programmes. The department enriches these activities in collaboration with local NGOs, national organisations such as TUNAECS and Europe-wide organizations such as ECPR. It is also worth mentioning the Jean Monnet European Module programme supported by the European Commission, which has been active since the 2005-2006 academic year. Under the European Module “The Policies and Institutions of an Enlarging EU”, postgraduate students of various departments are given education on the essentials of the EU. The Jean Monnet Chair in European Economic Integration was awarded to the head of the department Prof. Dr. Canan Balkir as of October 2008 and along with the launching of Erasmus programme from the academic year 2007-2008 onwards. Currently the department has three bilateral agreements concluded with the University of Exeter-Centre for European Studies, University of Genoa-Department of European Research and University of Ghent-Faculty of Political and Social Sciences.