Beginning with the 2005-06 academic year, the Academic Fellowship Program (AFP) of the Open Society Institute's International Higher Education Support Program (HESP) organizes yearly discipline-based meetings for its fellows, in order to support their professional development and to provide a networking opportunity for them and the departments in which they are based.

This Conference brings together approximately 90 participants: AFP Returning Scholars and other faculty members from partner departments in the four AFP regional programs: Southeast Europe, Russia/Ukraine/Moldova, the Caucasus, and Central Asia/Mongolia. Also invited are some of AFP's Resident and Non-Resident International Scholars. Thus, the conference creates a forum in which scholars from these regions can meet with their peers from the region and beyond to discuss the state of the disciplines in terms of research and teaching. The conference enables AFP Fellows and guests to engage in an intellectually stimulating and productive dialogue, exchanging views on best practice in research and teaching and opening avenues towards increased cooperation in these areas.

There are four main types of conference sessions:
1. Skills-building sessions: workshops, mini-courses and sessions focusing on recent developments in the disciplines.

2. Research Paper Presentations: traditional thematic panels bringing together scholars presenting state-of-the art research in their fields.

3. Networking Sessions: thematic and open-ended sessions to explore possible joint research and teaching development projects.

4. Roundtable Discussions: sessions focused on specific issues of concern to scholars, introduced by short opening statements by roundtable participants and then opened up for general discussion.

This conference site on PROL is a tool for disseminating the papers prior to the event participants are encouraged to download the papers to be presented in the panels they plan to attend. The site will remain active after the event, so that revised papers can be posted, after incorporating the feedback received from peers during the event.