The PARTICIPATE project kicked off the first of its 2024 network-wide training events with a week-long Winter School in the beautiful town
of Stavanger in Norway. Our ten Doctoral Candidates arrived at the University of Stavanger campus on 19th February for an intensive week of training and networking organised by our Norwegian partners Prof. Hildegunn Fandrem, Prof. Simona Caravita and Dr. Ida Risanger Sjursø from the Norwegian Centre for Learning Environment and Behavioural Research in Education.
Each morning, the Winter School began with a compelling keynote address from one of our partners and leading figures in the field of cyberbullying bullying research. Prof. Peter Smith from Goldsmiths College in London spoke about understanding cultural differences in bullying, Prof. Dorte-Marie Søndergaard from Aarhus University in Denmark presented a fascinating keynote titled ‘Situating bullying in the assemblage’, and Prof. Christina Salmivalli from the University of Turku in Finland spoke about research and applied perspectives on cyberbullying.
The Doctoral Candidates also took part in sessions on open science publication, new cyberbullying research and scientific writing. A highlight of the Winter School was undoubtedly the soft skills training in ‘How to communicate science to the public’, which ran over three days. This intensive course taught the researchers how to communicate complex ideas to the public on camera by improving their communication and interview techniques, and culminated in a presentation of all ten video interviews. The researchers did an excellent job and received very positive feedback from their trainers, Maria Gilje Strand and Ida Nummestad, as well as from the audience.
In addition to the excellent training sessions, our Stavanger colleagues treated us to wonderful hospitality, beautiful food and a guided tour of the city. We even got to travel on the bus of the local football club, Viking Stavanger! We got to know each other better and to learn more about one another’s research projects, progress and challenges. This great week of hard work, fun and networking in Stavanger showed how this truly interdisciplinary project is going from strength to strength.
