SVALBARD ALUMNI

Each year, over one thousand researchers from approximately 30 nations participate in research studies, projects, and monitoring programs in Svalbard. The vast majority of these students and research professionals only spend a finite time conducting activities in Svalbard and engaging on-the-ground with the Svalbard research community before returning to their home countries and institutions. Current programs on research cooperation and coordination are targeted at those individuals currently working in Svalbard, failing to engage the thousands of alumni of university programs, research stations, and short-term summer schools. This narrow focus misses an opportunity to foster data sharing, facilitation proactive planning of collaborations, and increase coordination of integrative research teams and grant applications for secondary and tertiary Svalbard-based projects for both STEM and social scientists. The proposed 2-day workshop will fill this gap by creating the first-ever Svalbard alumni network focused on early career scholars (graduate and post-doctorate). The end goal of this workshop is to identify, define, and develop a network of Svalbard-related young scholars. To do this, the workshop will take place after the Svalbard Science Forum, in November 2019, organized and implemented by the Fridtjof Nansen Institute in collaboration with The Arctic Institute. Using a participatory action research approach, the workshop will help to define a replicable and scalable framework a professional network for alumni of Svalbard based graduate work, summer schools, and educational exchanges. The engagement of early career scholars and graduate students is key to the success of this project, and thus in particular focus. We will engage current and past researchers in Svalbard from a diverse array of disciplines, countries, and professions in order to identify the most suitable alumni networking platform.