Most master-level courses at the International Summer School at UiO are interdisciplinary, and they often revolve around central questions pertaining to world peace and global justice. Course leader for “A Changing Arctic” Dr. Grace Shephardsays that when studying the Arctic, no single discipline is expansive enough to really capture the dynamics and feedbacks of this region.
— The Arctic is something everyone has an interest in, whether or not they know that themselves, says Shephard. —States, international organizations and private interests, including emerging economies in Asia, now show a keen interest in the High North and the Arctic at large. Anything on the poles and the Arctic is inherently interdisciplinary. With the former director of my institute, Professor Carmen Gaina, we have brought together people from natural science, law, led by Professor Alla Podznakova (UiO), and humanities, led by Professor Elana Wilson Rowe (NUPI) (earlier Professor Olav Schram Stokke, UiO) in this course. It is a unique course because it involves three different faculties and many disciplines.
Shephard taught the master-level course “A Changing Arctic” this year for the first time since 2018. Due to the pandemic, the course was redesigned into a digital format.
Anything but Ahistoric
Shephard is a researcher in geology and geophysics at the Center for Earth Evolution and Dynamics, hosted at the department of Geosciences at the University of Oslo. One of the course’s central questions is the contrast between what the Arctic typically references in peoples’ minds, and elements that are necessarily involved in any thorough study of the region.
The title of the course, “A Changing Arctic” already implies a historical perspective.
— In terms of long-term average, the temperature of the Arctic region has increased more than the rest of the world, it is warming at a rate that used to be twice as fast but is now three times as fast as the rest of the world, says Shephard. — With the recent release of the IPCC — Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, this is one of the most burning issues. But history is not merely solely climate related. There is so much we do not know about fauna and arctic ecosystems, there are new territorial claims being made in the region by Arctic states, and earlier this year an international treaty recently entered into force on fishing in the central Arctic Ocean. Despite all of this, the rhetoric of conflict in the Arctic is not really true, there has been no race for resources.
Katharina Heinrich from Iceland one of this year’s students, and was happy to attend the course via Zoom also due to climate considerations:
—After the course I had to think a lot about the fact, that, despite some difficulties that come along with the COVID-19 pandemic, it was a great opportunity for everyone from all over the world to participate in such a course no matter where we are located, says Heinrich. —As such, you might be able to say that a little bit of the Arctic was brought to people from all over the world who are passionate and interested in studying them. In addition, a positive benefit for the environment came along with it, even though, it would have been great to travel to Norway and meet everyone in person.
Serious About Interdisciplinary
An interdisciplinary course requires a range of different experts, and Shephard involved no fewer than 16 guest lecturers in the course from Norway, Russia, Canada, USA, and Italy.
— Some guest lecturers were from Norway, some joined us from Alaska at 0400h in the morning, says Shephard. All of this was possible due to the pandemic and the following digitalization of the course.
The course was comprised of 5 different weekly modules: an overview, a study of land, then sea, dynamics, and finally people and society. The student body of the course is an additional asset to its pedagogy, and in true ISS fashion, students of 18 different nationalities attended the course. But the students were diverse in more ways than one.
— With my natural science brain it can be challenging for me to discuss with people from other disciplines, says Shephard. It is interesting to hear lawyers ask complex questions on how ecosystems work. From this we build better questions and discussions, and see the real value of different disciplines being able to communicate meaningfully with one another. Things that aren’t apparently connected come to the fore when you have students that are lawyers, environmental scientists, filmmakers and of very different ages, too!
Arctic-student Vadims Murasovs from Latvia brought a humanities perspective to the class.
— The Arctic is a fascinating region; it has multiple layers of meaning, which interact, overlap, and get articulated in a variety of ways, says Murasovs. —I work in the field of international affairs dealing with identity and region-building issues – it is therefore important for me to be able to decode these layers and understand their texture and dynamics. The changes in the Arctic urge us to rethink our time horizons and reassess our values. It is therefore central that this course puts extra emphasis on sustainable development goals and ways of achieving them in the Arctic.
Student Dissemination
As a part of the course curriculum, students were asked to write blog posts connecting the course material to the UN Sustainable Development Goals, balancing societal, economic and environmental needs. Aiming for 2030, students were asked to respond to questions such as, what needs to be done to achieve the SDGs in the Arctic?
“The Arctic can be seen as a role model regarding the proactive management of marine resources.”
— All these blog posts were truly excellent, says Shephard. Students clearly capitalized on bringing their own areas of expertise into the larger questions at hand.
“Conflicts in the Arctic are not only political or economic; they are also societal
and can affect the mental health of young people, especially in indigenous
communities."
MOOC
The course “A Changing Arctic” contributes to the overarching ISS-goal of global peace and cross-cultural understanding through the interdisciplinary sharing of knowledge and experiences. Beyond what students bring with them from this course, Shephard and the ISS have received funding from the UArctic, UiO:Norden, and CEED/UiO to make the course into a Massive Open Online Course (MOOC). Thus, the course will become accessible to the wider public from all demographics and localities.
—This means the course would be deliverable to everyone, reaching nontraditional students of all demographics and truly globally, says Shephard. —It is a huge topic, relevant to all, and we are condensing key concepts and elements into short, 6 minute videos and short exercises. It will aim to disseminate the current state-of-knowledge in natural and social sciences, governance and law, combined with historical perspectives and future projections of the Arctic region. Developing collaborative solutions in the face of common challenges will be a particular focus. The wide range of issues makes it especially suited for a MOOC.
The MOOC-course will contribute to educating the current generation of Arctic and polar educators, residents, researchers, policy-makers, stakeholders, as well as the broader global community at-large.
—We anticipate that an online version of course would be highly sought-after, and could be combined as a supplementary resource with other international polar and Arctic courses, not just the ISS course, says Shephard. —It would also build an international network of researchers and lecturers who would not usually cross paths.
—The International Summer School has had a focus on the Arctic and polar region in our course offerings ever since 1948, says ISS-director Nita Kapoor. —Our current course was established by CEED in collaboration with the ISS in 2014, and it is the first time this summer it has been run digitally. It’s not only gratifying to see the continued relevance of the Arctic for the world and our students, but also interesting to see the constant innovation that the course represents with regard to outreach and teaching methods.