Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography | Tagged Bodø, Sandhornøy | Leave a Comment »
7/8: I had the pleasure this week of working with potential U Helsinki postdoctoral researcher Daria Gritsenko, now PhD candidate (filed dissertation May and expecting degree October), who is studying geopolitics of Finnish and Russian maritime fuel transportation and port authority public sector administration (St. Petersburg, Viborg, Primorsk).
Our cultures of expertise collaborative research came by an introduction of her advisor, Dr. Veli–Pekka Tynkkynen, U Helsinki Professor in Russian Energy Policy at Aleksanteri Institute and Department of Social Research.
Daria skills includes identifying the integrity of phrases within sentence structure, providing a stiffening-of-the-neck experience when listening to her commentary regarding clarity at critical junctures across the page.
As with previous project description drafts we worked with, many of the items that have been sitting there — as if on proud display — through the critique of Daria, now appear as sunbathers, as if loafing on the page instead of taking initiative on the actual existing project.
It is an art of recycling.
From the special attention we now gather the following insight on correct scientific etiquette for deliberation toward future project research:
Item (1) the expert brings with her a vocabulary that in-advance represents an organically direct connection between empirical (or worldly) experience and firm grasp of the disciplinary register;
Item (2) there must be some total grasp of the object of focus from which present discussion goes forth, and thus, from now on, we impose acute requirements for having done one’s homework prior to meeting at hand.
Item (3) we impose a (likely voracious) appetite for improvement with all its requisite of personal preference of will to improve, that is, undiminished by insecurity, ambivalence, or cynicism.
Oh bother. The main luxury here is just…what inspiration when working alongside true collaborators and, of course, the joy of the work itself – to open up space with time to work through the details of research.
Bravo!
Thank you, again, Daria!
Wooden Entrance: Academy of Finland
7/7: A meeting at Academy of Finland, Culture and Society Research Unit with Science Adviser, Dr. Satu Hiiha-Cissokho, Hakaniemenranta 6.
Fascination with walking up wooden steps to a steel and glass building that houses state administrative functions. There, right in front of the modern structure rises the smell of old-world pinewood lumber baking under the summer sun.
Somewhere buried in this blog are references to Martin Heidegger‘s appeal to (wooden, leather) materials that take affect of human presence, what Dr. Nuccio Mazzullo instructed as the location where “human action comes into focus”.
A sentiment perhaps belonging to memories from anyone’s guess of what a high-altitude (Squaw Valley) or, in this case, high-latitude household wooden-deck-feeling can taste like after the complete thaw of winter snow — all the while, now cracking in summer splendor.
Is it no surprise that the Academy of Finland entrance does not double as a sunbathing platform?
Hot summers are a serious issue.
For me, the official “Finnish Summer” takes place on the 8th floor of the Stockmann Department store in the center of Helsinki — a culturally important shopping experience, according to the continuous intercom service announcement wafting inside of the building.
Nevertheless.
Most folks seek out a strip of pine deck upon which to lie, sun, and laze. Behold, the bitty quay located just minutes stroll from Academy of Finland.
Inside the building, I was presented with a ready-made security badge printed prior to my arrival.
The building lieutenants offered me directions for taking a seat in waiting rooms where several types of chairs to choose from lay about, providing me with a typical entrance experience [note to self].
Inside the conference room, a wall-hanging bronze plaque with the engraving Academy of Finland [Suomen Akatemia in Finnish] provided a moment of reflection.
Satu was quite generous with her time. She has special knowledge about European Research Council (ERC) operations, meaning that she belongs to a rarefied class of person living today across Europe who can actually make contact with a real-life person inside the ERC building in Brussels. 
It was with great pleasure and humility that the meeting took place at all.
Satu invited me to an opportunity to think carefully about submissions to ERC, and also, to take some photographs of our meeting location. Academy of Finland recently moved into this wooden entranced steel glass building, now occupying two entire floors.
In the end, wondering aloud during dinner over the unique design feature that is visible at street level from the appearance of lines drawn on glass from the outside of the building, I thought about whether it curtails the view from inside, when looking out on the Helsinki landscape.
It is an empirical question. The image above provides a measure of affirmative confirmation.
It is always a pleasure to meet with Anna Korhonen, Aleksanteri Institute administrator of research and grants. We shared several hours brainstorming over Marie Curie ideas in true collaborative spirit.
In the conversation, we turned to the specificity of expertise held by consultants, posing to ourselves the question: what is their basic trick, for example, in guiding knowledge to users for developing projects?
Speaking frankly, the added value of Aya van den Kroonenberg (apart from her cool name) is the ability to separate the clutter from the object at hand and to create a sanctified space where only practical activity and the art of focus can narrow the distance between oneself and objects of inquiry.
It is a rarefied talent that as social science researchers contemplating such things in the hallways of Aleksanteri Institute, made us tittle as we held our heads in wonder.
Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography | Tagged Helsinki | Leave a Comment »
6/26: Yellow Research workshop for the Horizon 2020: Marie Sklodowska Curie Individual Fellowships Call 2014 (European Research Council) led by Lotte Jaspers.
Superb meeting. Knowledge presented here may be proprietary. Any questions on content or concerns, please contact the editor and changes will be made to respect the intellectual property of presentations.
What are the main questions?
The Horizon 2020 is a new program. What are the new instructions, criteria for quality of applicants, and evaluation procedure? What are the added values that move a proposal beyond the threshold?
Let us begin: The key issue, one of the basic developments is the question: What is the appropriate next step in a career to go to the next level?
What is the current CV, but what is missing in order to get to the next position, and how does the Marie Curie help develop the skills, knowledge, expertise to go the next step.
How does the grant benefit the PI, what is the potential to grow?
Lotte nicely positions the issue within the change in the title of the grant itself, with the addition of “Sklodowska”, suggesting the emphasis is on how it was that Marie Sklodowska Curie, a Polish scientist, moved from Poland to develop more specifically and accurately her skill set.
What is the scientific project, and what is novel? And why – is what you intend to do important for the fellow — important for the actual PI career?
What kind of training? What kind of courses are offered? How is the group run? Who are the PHD students (co-supervision), and how can the applicant use the structure of the group to mature? “Individual researcher applies jointly with host institution”.
Experienced researcher and Maturity. Who is the applicant. No age limits, but there are difficulties with expressing your growth pattern.
What kind of knowledge is required to boost a career? Looking broader for where training can be carried out, looking at other universities and setups for support. What is the new criteria? It is the introduction of secondments. What is the current CV and what are the good places to go and you have been thinking about where to get the best knowledge for a top notch career?
With an excellent track record, how does one look to the future. How does one expand knowledge? Perhaps it is your focus on aesthetics, and that you require looking at structured interests, especially in Russia, where the political structural position is still quite important in relation to cultures of expertise (or, in order to get tenure, you need to get a PI)?
Two years. A project that fits the goals of where you want to go. A vehicle for movement in a specific direction.
The twelve person group in the room today is mainly composed of research advisors at various universities in Europe, including Norway, Sweden, Turkey, Denmark, Italy, and Spain.
Looking at the project and the career candidate to benefit from the grant. (Don’t over boost, but state clearly “I’m here and need to get over there”).
The reviewer has a tough job.
Coffee Break: What a great morning Session.
Lotte was just wonderful. She provided us with a splendid beginning for a subsequent set of networking discussions over coffee that were quite illuminating.
Lies Siemons, e.g., from Tilburg University snapped up the three main issues that we all understood from the morning as fundamentally important: (1) make sure the proposal captures attention; (2) make sure there are organic components with the host organization, such as advising graduate students; (3) make sure the host organization is integrated into the project.
What is the fellow’s ambition? The majority are PIs in a research-intensive institution. And thus, what is it that you need?
Is it methodologies, techniques, knowledges? Skills, leadership — four categories: Knowledge and intellectual abilities; Personal effectiveness; Research governance and organization; Engagement, influence, and impact. Specify with the fellow, what you need, and let it provide a structure for the what areas are where you need to improve: Lay out your vision for what you want to achieve based on established tools, underpin your vision for going abroad. Wording and Analysis of vision (Pp. 3-4 third section).
E.g, co-supervision, leadership, and management skills — Organize some of the science/thematic meetings. Lotte is looking for what is missing now, given the six categories of the CV analysis. Hard skills and soft skills formal training on the job, “And that’s why I need the supervisor, and how can I explain that the training will boost the career” (Yellow research “philosophy”). What is the publication strategy to be regarded as outstanding.
Up Now is Aya van den Kroonenberg. Aya is Wonderful! – having worked with her previously on numerous occasions.
Wow. So interesting and impactful. A three percent success rate and an environment where the newly established feature of secondments become crucial.
Make sure it is “Training Through Research” — it is a training grant, and training should be addressed, not simply a research grant.
Quality, Innovation, and Credibility – likely terms that might be piled together on any other occasion, but here parsed out so precisely it is simply dizzying. Remember that objectives are tasks….
Reducing complexity in a simplified form that serves as the basis for registering quality, innovation, and credibility. For example, we are looking at a small table that addresses how the proposal compares to the current state of the art and how it will be advanced, all by a small simple table, that presents itself as a hieroglyph of expertise.
LUNCH: (“the north[ern Europe] is starving the south[ern Europe] is saying ‘already?'”)
Back from lunch: Coherence between training and research – a perfect match of programs, e.g., help with organization of conference.
Under the new Horizon 2020, the host requires input on the production of the proposal much more so than at anytime previously. A lot of discussion about the role of the supervisor — for example, a Personal Career Development Plan (PCDP), each fellow establishes a PCDP. When, Who approves? and who updates?
Wow. Just more of everything in more detail. Attempting to get over the fact that last year, out of 5000 application submissions, there were 134 grants awarded.
So, we all just had a major break out session, with participants developing comments for discussion with applicants of the Horizon 2020 MC individual fellowships Call. Here is the final product of our discussion:
• Integrate the larger picture of your career and host goals within the specific elements of a two year project as displayed in the Gantt chart – what happens after.
• Identify where you are on the continuum of early career or maturity
• Identify the crucial argument(s) for each section
• How to get your supervisor involved in the proposal
• Develop a strategy for having the host institution continually feed you with necessary knowledge for proposal integration with supervisor and specific services support
• Identify long-term and short term career goals and create coherent alignment with proposal
• Identify training targeted for post PhD independence – specific elements.
• Identify what is the Scientific excellence
Additional notes after getting together: What are the programs offered during the fellowship? First year define precisely and in the second year broadly. The need to make the evaluators excited about the project: What is the relevance of the topic? What is the scope of the project? Is it relevant?
Create coherence in the actual proposal
Final push: Impact, innovation and research component. Excellence in Science.
Non-commercial exploitation – How to communicate to peers and public your science (how do you get into contact? With whom? Ways to communicate – conferences, open science days, and story telling evenings). What is Effective? Who benefits (could there be potential for commercial exploitation and if not, that’s okay, as long as there is germane realism (communication over outreach with clear activities)?
One work package specifically for “training”.
We all met for wine afterward, and chatted about anecdotal comments relating to the business at hand. Aya and Lotte were so professional, and in fact, defatiguable, given the scope of the discussions they presented. Congratulations! Yellow Research! Another successful panel.
Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography | Tagged Amsterdam | Leave a Comment »
Site Visitation and Ad Hoc Conversation with Dr. Traci Speed: Geography of Established Landscapes (or, the “nature” of exotic spaces).
It is difficult to drive through Lofoten with its majestic landscapes without referring to a few passages from Nina Witoszek‘s analysis on nature and culture in nineteenth century Norway (ch.2, Origins of the Regime of Goodness). “The mountains are, in the last instance, our best Norwegians”, citing Henrik Wergeland, Norway’s romantic poet, as a way for Nina to describe nature and nature-related imagery as a totemic possession of Norwegians.
Unlike nineteenth century Romantics elsewhere, for whom imagination, mystery, and miracle, were linked to worlds of madness synonymous with thraldom, a loss of the self in the uncanny eternal forces (p. 36), Norwegian nature was reasonable:
“[Nature] is the rational element (in man) which we must believe to have been innate in the soul from its beginning [and] was the work of an Author who is himself ‘rational’; [whereas] the non-rational element is not properly called ‘natural'” (Tertullian cited in Witoszek).
Notably, this conversation would be truly amiss–if the point was not further supported by the fact that reason, nature, and scientific rationality continue to play an important role in Norwegian cultural reason today.
As evidence, for example, consider the importance that Norwegian scientists place on the imagery of nineteenth century ecologist, explorer, and cosmopolitanist, Fridtjof Nansen, as he appears here on the left, in a life-sized oil and canvas portrait that, today, hangs within the institute that bears his name, in Lysaker, outside Oslo, and run by the distinguished Arctic social scientist Arild Moe.
And again, in a speech by marine biologist and scientific leader, Paul Wassman, as seen below, during his lecture at the Norwegian TransAtlantic Science Conference held at Rice University, Houston, in late 2012.
Well, anyway.
What was really on our mind as we gazed over the spectacle, indeed, was whether or not the issue that captivated us–was perhaps an element of exoticism having to do with specified labor practices attributed to a geography that, in fact, has no basis for present conditions in reproducing the way people today live on the landscape.
What we simply could not arrest from our thoughts was the possibility of seeing a landscape in which the total organizing potential refers to an entirely different form of labor than what is now possible through careerism, and thus, making it impossible for us to comprehend nature outside of an exotic framework.
Stated more simply: Who lives by organizing their entire social, political, and economic energies via cod fishing at high latitudes of variable weather patterns established by the Gulf stream?
It is a wonder to behold.
Inevitably, our pondering required caffeine and of course, aestheticized interiors, whether enjoying the comforts of a climate controlled automobile or the visible interactions of cafe society down in the Lofoten chain.
Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography | Tagged Kabelvåg, Lofoten, Ramberg, Sørvågen, Svolvær | 1 Comment »
St. Petersburg University of Economics and Finance
Environmental Politics and Policy Lectures June 2-7
Where to begin… With the student presentations! Of course!!
…
Posted in Paparazzi Ethnography | Tagged St Petersburg | Leave a Comment »
Paparazzi Ethnography 