The SUNRAISE workshop and project management meeting on Arctic research training and curriculum development (agenda) is over. It was hold in September 25-26, 2018 at Russian State Hydrometeorological University in St.-Petersburg in cooperation with a likely minded Jean Monnet project GRASS – EU governance of natural resources: geopolitics, regions and sectors. This cooperation has brought us a lot of positive synergies, including the presence of some high level experts from some world leading Arctic research centres, such as Lund University, Moscow State University and Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. We could both hold a scholarly discussion on what are the new ways and issues Arctic studies are concerned with, and also on the implications for curriculum development and teaching. This included a strategy game on marine spatial planning in Arctic offered in cooperation with the representatives of the Marine Spatial Planning Research Institute “Ermak the North West”, and a discussion on curriculum development planning in the field of Arctic co-moderated by Prof. Sergei Nikonorov of Moscow State University. Another important issue was a discussion of labour market survey and terms of references for curriculum development coordinated by the subcontracted partner Erda RTE (the Netherlands). As the last meeting agenda item, Prof. Kalev Sepp of Estonian University of Life Sciences and Ruben Zondervan of Lund University (an external speaker) made a presentation and led a discussion on course development methodology and SUNRAISE syllabus formats.
The meeting was rich of useful outcomes, first of all a shared vision on the development of Arctic curricula and research training by SUNRAISE partners, and understanding of management and governance developments needed for a good progress towards and beyond the project objective.