A Jean Monnet Multilateral Research Group, on which Joan DeBardeleben (EURUS) is a partner, launched its first international workshop in Mainz, Germany, on April 11-12, 2014. The research initiative, entitled ‘Approaching EU-Russia Relations’ differently’, is supported by a grant from the Life Long Learning Program of the European Union. Joan DeBardeleben holds the Jean Monnet Chair in the EU’s Eastern Neighbourhood Relations at Carleton and is part of a four-university team running the project. The lead institution is the University of Kent (Tom Casier) and other partners are at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (Arne Niemann) and St. Petersburg University, Russia (Tatiana Romanova). The project seeks to develop transnational and innovative perspectives on the now troubled EU-Russian relationship (in the face of the Ukraine/Crimean crisis) and to go beyond the more common EU-centric or Russia-centric approaches to the issue. Both Joan DeBardeleben and Crina Viju (EURUS) presented papers at the workshop.