ARCO-KNOW. Arctic Research: Co-production of Knowledge EDUFI Finnish-Russian PhD course (May 20-24, 2019)

D r . A n n a S t a m m l e r - G o s s m a n n , C o o r d i n a t o r A r c t i c C e n t r e , U n i v e r s i t y o f L a p l a n d , R o v a n i e mi

ARCO-KNOW: About the Arctic - at the Arctic Circle

13 lecturers, 15 students and 4 guest researchers/students from Finland and Russia discussed about challenges and opportunities of collaborative approaches in social science research in the Arctic.

ARCO-KNOW: Research questions

- What counts as co-production and what interaction between science and society should entail in practice?

- What are the options available for the integration of the ‘formal’ and ‘informal’ into the Arctic research?

ARCO-KNOW: Learning aims

- to learn about the forms and values of multiple, often conflicting concepts of knowledge; - to discuss how to design research in a way that maximizes its meaningful societal outcome; - to improve the research methodologies and learn about collaborative approaches in research; - to learn about frameworks beyond the own research field in the multidisciplinary context

ARCO-KNOW: 3 ECTS credits course requirements

- Presentation of ongoing or completed PhD projects - Presentation of group work - Reading of the requested course material - Successful completion of written blog entries

ARCO-KNOW: Added value

- This course was facilitated by combining leading expertise, novelty and significance of the theme, intensity of teaching and diversity of learning activities

- The course offered possibilities to enhance the scientific network and intensify the cooperation between Finland and Russia.

- For the partner institutions it was an opportunity to complement their educational and research activities

ARCO-KNOW: working hard

- Long days and intensity of the course were compensated by creative, challenging

intellectually, and handwork tasks; - Six workshops and a field trip were offered to all participants and created an optimal

setting for knowledge exchange between senior and junior scholars.

ARCO-KNOW: hard work, but still… learning can be fun “Visual thinking” workshop

ARCO-KNOW: Organisational challenges and solutions

- Language skills (not crucial problem nowadays, but to some extend it was a matter in the process of choosing the candidates. Some good candidates could not participate).

- Timing: Differences in curriculum at the universities hindered some applicants to participate.

- Last-minute ”surprises”: Visa issuing denial, cancellation, search for new candidates. Solution: personal network within academic community

- Budget matter: Hard to calculate in details until the end (long search for affordable but good accommodation, catering and transport services etc). Solution: additional funding sources to cover room rental costs, coffee breaks and lunches. Result: money left, but it is a good feeling that the budget limit was not exceeded.

- Blog: Technical arrangements became quite challenging matter. Solution: The students are more advanced than teachers, good to ask them

ARCO-KNOW. Our course success recipe: Learning from others – ”producing” itself – presenting/transferring

the ”product” in a way that others are happy

“I am very glad that I have had such an opportunity to go to Rovaniemi and to take part in Finnish-Russian course. I have got acquainted with a lot of people from different fields and places.

…and now we can say that we feel that we are family. The course was full of diverse activities which let us exchange our experience, knowledge and opinions”.

Sofia Popova, Murmansk Arctic State University,

“…The people, who participated in the Arco-Know course came from quite different backgrounds. On Thursday, the second last day of the week, I felt that we all are connected at some level.

…I understood something, at this point, quite substantial to me. We might look at the topic from quite different angles, but through the Arctic we are able to make connections and possibly create something new together, even on a deep personal level”.

Juha Reihä, University of Tampere

• Co-production of knowledge: It is a long path… but we are working on it…

ARCO-KNOW blog: https://arcoknow.home.blog/ Arctic anthropology (Arctic Centre, University of Lapland) https://arcticanthropology.org/2019/05/16/arctic-research-co-production-of-knowledge/

Acknowledgment:

Finnish-Russian PhD course was supported by EDUFI the Finnish National Agency for Education