We are recruiting 2 students to the International Graduate Student Research Cohort 2025

 In cooperation with Maine North Atlantic Institute at the University of Southern Maine.

In addition to the University of Southern Maine and UiT The Arctic University of Norway, the 2025 Cohort will also include students and faculty from Robert Gordon University (RGU), the University of Greenland, and Reykjavik University (RU).

Mission

The International Graduate Student Research Cohort is an annual organized effort that brings together international students and faculty to collaborate on a research project resulting in a publishable paper and presentation at the Arctic Circle Assembly (ACA) in Reykjavik, Iceland.

Student Criteria / Expectations:

Graduate-level student (or a high performing undergrad that will be starting graduate courses Fall 2025). Any discipline. Commit to meeting at least once per month with whole group and once per month with the student group. Commit to producing a research paper (their topic) through the Blue Economy and Triple Bottom Line lenses. Able to present / attend ACA next fall (covered by the home university). The students will also help with UiT booth at the conference.

Background Information

This project enables networking and collaboration among a cohort of international students and faculty through remote video conferencing sessions in advance of coming together in person at the ACA. During the ACA, the members of the cohort attend expert panels and present their research project. The project will demonstrate how universities and the private sector in the Arctic can collaborate and leverage each other’s perspectives and strengths to design more integrated solutions for the Blue Economy.

The cohort will focus on the Triple Bottom Line (TBL) framework as seen through the lenses of innovative best practices and partnerships. The Triple Bottom Line is a sustainability framework that measures a company’s social, environmental, and economic impacts. In principle, it is an effort to develop products and companies that fully balance “People, Planet, and Profit” without traditional silos of thought and action. In practice, it is meant to ensure that projects are developed considering as many UN Sustainability Development Goals as possible.

Logistics

Each University will provide one or two students and one faculty advisor to participate in the cohort. Monthly virtual sessions will be conducted with the entire cohort to help develop and move the work forward. Separate monthly meetings will be organized and attended by the students only to work on their research that will culminate in a collaborative published paper. The Universities commit to sending both students and faculty members to the ACA in October 2025 so they may attend the sessions, as well as co-present their research project. Faculty and students will be drawn from a variety of fields, such as Business, Law, Social Work, Public Health, Mental Health/Counseling, Psychology, and the Sciences and Environment. The expectation is that faculty and students will work together in a cross-disciplinary manner, just as TBL thinking and implementation require. Every effort will be made to help students and faculty members integrate this project into their existing research/ teaching.

Apply by filling out this form: https://nettskjema.no/a/475924

Questions to be directed to: natalia.kononova@uit.no 

Application deadline: January 23, 2025.