Welcome to apply to the NORCAM PhD course in Community Adaptation to Climate Change in the North! (7,5 ECTS credits)
The NORCAM PhD course is a residential PhD course held outside Umeå, Sweden, Monday-Friday 4-8 June 2012. The residential stay is supplemented with preparatory coursework and a final essay to be submitted after the course. For accepted students, costs including lodging and board will be covered (students need to cover their own travel). No additional costs are required for students outside Sweden.
Application deadline: March 1, 2012 (click here for application form) Acceptance will be announced after March 15, 2012
The NORCAM network
The Nordic Network for Climate Change, Adaptation, and Multilevel
Governance (NORCAM) is a Nordic Council/Nordforsk-funded network including Center for International Climate and Environmental Research, Oslo, Norway; Umeå University, Umeå, Sweden; University of Lapland, Finland; and Stefansson Arctic Institute, Akureyri, Iceland. The group also has members and affiliations at the University of Colorado at Boulder, US; University of Akureyri, Iceland; and University of Waterloo, Canada.
Course location
The course will be held at Hotel Forsen in Vindeln, a scenic location in a village just outside Umeå. Umeå, situated in northern Sweden, is a lively large university town of about 115 000 persons – of which some 37 000 registered students. The course is hosted by the Department of Geography and Economic History, a department of about 70 persons with a large focus on environmental and resource issues.
To apply for the course, you need to be a registered PhD student. The course is suitable for a varie
Course requirement
ty of mainly social sciences but also interdisciplinary natural science students oriented whose studies include use of adaptation theories, in particular on local level. In case of the number of applications exceeding the number of places on the course, preference is given, firstly, to students associated with the NORCAM Network, and secondly, depending on relevance of student research orientation to the course (as presented in the student’s application for the course).
Course tasks
- Preparatory summary: Students are before the course (deadline to be set) required to submit a short (approx. 5 p) summary of their Ph D work with a focus on case studies and existing application of any adaptation theory, to be presented and discussed at the course.
- Examination paper: After the course (deadline to be set), a final 10-15 p. paper is submitted on how the course literature on adaptation can be applied to their case (cases they are working on or plan to be working on). With a basis in course literature, the paper is to discuss:
- How, if so, do adaptation theories add an understanding of the case – are they specific enough, what areas do they cover that other theories do not, what are the rationale for working with adaptation theory in this case? How can levels or scale issues in relation to adaptation be treated?
- How can their case be compared with other cases?
- What methodologies could be relevant to reach an understanding of adaptation in the case?
Course description (click here for course description)
Provisional schedule (click here for provisional schedule)
Provisional reading list (click here for provisional reading list)
