The Nordic Research Course: A true venue for ideas and perspectives
Close to 20 research fellows and post doctorates attended this year’s Nordic research training course, Should States Ratify Human Rights Conventions? The five day course took place in Reykjavik.
Students and some of the teachers attending this year’s Nordic Research Course in Reykjavik.
The course, this year jointly organised by the Norwegian Centre for Human Rights, the Icelandic Human Rights Centre and the Institute for Human Rights at the University of Iceland provides a first class opportunity for doctorates and post doctorates to a general scholarly update in human rights research, in addition to present aspects of their own dissertations, and to have these presentations evaluated by the lecturers.
Among those that lectured this year, we find professors Andreas Føllesdal, Oddny Mjøll Arnadottir, Anne-Julie Semb, Geir Ulfstein and Arild Underdal.
-An excellent opportunity to present one’s own research plan, and to receive a cross-disciplinary evaluation, involving both law and social sciences, notes Magdalena Kmak of The Erik Castrén Institute of International Law and Human Rights. Herself a lawyer, she welcomes the opportunity to discuss various methods and angles relevant to her own research, in what she describes as a respectful and tolerant atmosphere.
Laimonas Markauskas of the Mykolas Romeris University in Vilnius agrees. This is his second course, and he plans to attend another one when he is about to finish his current project.
-It gives me a welcome input, some new interesting contacts and the strength to continue, he says.
The participants come from most of the Nordic Countries, including the Baltics, and chief organiser, Maria Sommardahl of the NCHR, is pleased to note a good turnout.
-These are all young academics, eager for impulses and for new contacts, which makes the Nordic Research Course a true venue for ideas and perspectives, she concludes.