The GCE supports the Centre for Advanced Studies (CAS) in Sofia with an annual grant of CHF 100,000. The board of trustees and the scientific advisory board ensure the proper use of allocated funds and the continued funding as well as the academic excellence.

In 2016, the CAS supported nine Bulgarian and six international scholarship holders with its Advanced Academia scholarship program. The Gerda Henkel Fellowship Program further awarded two five-month scholarships. Two research projects received financial grants this year: The Robert Bosch Foundation and the Porticus foundation financed the “How to Teach Europe in the 21st Century”?-project, and the GCE supported the “Does Monastic Economy Matter?” research project. Additionally, the Landis & Gyr Foundation supports artists with a newly created scholarship at the CAS.

The New Europe College (NEC) in Bucharest receives an annual grant of CHF 300’000 through the GCE. The Center is tasked to examine the purpose, effectiveness, and efficiency regarding the use of allocated funds, and ensures continued funding. Prof. Dr. Dirk Lehmkuhl represents the GCE as the president on the board of trustees. The Center additionally assures the quality of scientific activities at the NEX by way of Prof. Dr. Ulrich Schmid’s inclusion on the scientific advisory board.

The NEC contributes significantly to academic debates on the Black Sea Region. Researchers at the NEC organized six international colloquia and workshops on the history, present and future of the region. These events took place as part of the “Black Sea Link Fellowship between 2010 and 2015.

In 2016, the NEC conceptualized the Black Sea region as a space of movement, migration, transfer, circulation, and tributary with a focus on the analytical concept of ‘mobility’. The workshop proceedings are now integrated into the ‘Pontica Magna Fellowship Program’. Within this paradigm, hierarchies are no longer at the center of analyses. Instead, actors, their trajectories, boundaries, and forms of communication form the point of departure. This interdisciplinary approach examines phenomena that are ordinarily overlooked by classical analyses with political, economic, and/or religious foci.