The QUINT PhD seminar was an important opportunity to bring the Nordic wide community of QUINT PhD fellows together. The seminar offered the fellows the opportunity to present their research to their peers and supervisors, as well as to function as friendly, critical commentators for each other's presentations.
All QUINT PhD fellows are required to make comparative analyses or use data from at least 2 different Nordic countries. This means that each PhD fellow will have another supervisor outside of their own country, in another institution. To accommodate for this, QUINT offers mobility grants that can fund travel to a host institution for up to 2 months at a time.
The Nordic dimension of the PhD projects also requires a great degree of collaborative work from the PhD fellows, which is why QUINT accommodates for the community to come together for PhD seminars, as well as organising an international PhD Summer Institute in combination with the annual QUINT conference.
In her talk about the overall research design challenges, Professor Marte Blikstad-Balas and QUINT Deputy Director, emphasised the importance of collaboration. In order to ensure sensitivity to cultural contexts, it is important to find out what researchers from different countries think about the data from their country. Building a Nordic network where QUINT PhD students can meet, discuss, and work together is therefore of utmost importance.
The next international PhD summer institute will take place over two days in June in Iceland.