IREX–International Research & Exchanges Board

IREX Field Offices

The International Research & Exchanges Board is a private, nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting advanced field research and professional training programs between the United States and the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, Russia, Ukraine, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Eurasia, China, and comparable contiguous societies.

With its traditional base in the university research community, and in collaboration with partners from the policy, corporate, media, and private foundation sectors, IREX sponsors and supports programs of advanced field research, professional training, international conferences, seminars, and comparative analysis in order to achieve three mutually reinforcing goals:

• To foster the development of basic and applied research in the social and political sciences, the humanities, and other relevant disciplines in order to strengthen American university research and teaching capabilities on these critical countries, and to improve field assessment and policy analysis on this area in the United States;
• To assist fellow professionals in these partner countries develop new approaches for their own intellectual, social, economic, and political communities by assisting in improving indigenous research capabilities, expanding access to international information resources, bolstering new professional associations and civic institutions, and increasing regional corporate and media skills.
• To forge cooperative links between universities, policymakers, professional and civic associations, and corporate and media groups in the United States and partner countries abroad that will build and sustain the network of intellectual and professional contacts that are the heart of this mandate.

IREX receives funding and support from its member universities, major foundations, US government sponsors, leading corporations, and committed individuals in the private sector.

Programs

Through a series of integrated programs IREX:

• Provides field research opportunities for American specialists and analysts;
• Administers US-based and on-site education and training for international leaders, professionals, and scholars;
• Assists in the creative restructuring of overseas universities and their curricula, finding them committed US university partners where possible;
• Promotes the creation and development of institutional partnerships between US universities and professional associations and their international counterparts;
• Supports, through technical assistance, the development of self-sustaining, independent media in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE), and the New Independent States of the former Soviet Region (NIS).
• Promotes the use of the Internet for scholarly and professional communication;
• Fosters cooperative programs of development for libraries, archives, and information systems;
• Designs new courses and training programs for corporate and professional needs;
• Develops and implements conferences and workshops addressing contemporary issues for policymakers, scholars, corporate representatives, and the media.

Last updated:    October 1999

A print version of much of the information contained in this NIS Third Sector Organizations section can be found in the The Post-Soviet Handbook (Seattle and London: University of Washington Press, 1999).

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