University of Lapland and the Arctic Centre are encouraging their people to go out, see the world and come back home with bright new ideas. NPE team member Hanna Lempinen spent the summer as a visiting researcher at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
As I love travel, new places and new people, it was self-evident for me since the beginning of my PhD project that I would make use of the possibility to go abroad for a research visit at some point; however, how I ended up precisely in Groningen was very much of a spur of the moment thing. It was the summer of 2013, I was in Groningen for a 2-week summer school and as I was coming back to the hotel from a jazz club and sitting on the back of the bike of a colleague in the middle of a massive summer heat wave thunderstorm, I suddenly felt that didn’t want to go back home. As that was not exactly an option, I decided that in any case I would at least want to return. After coming home I did some background work about funding possibilities and the university, and a few e-mails later – and with the support of some incredibly helpful people – I had secured myself a position as a guest PhD at the Department of Cultural Geography.
Even though I originally ended up in Groningen through what one could describe a series of odd coincidences, the research visit was tremendously useful in the professional sense. Being in a different environment and meeting new, friendly and incredibly welcoming people who are doing exciting things made me also think about my own ongoing work in a very different way. Having studied and worked in a small university throughout my academic career, I was also amazed by the sheer size of the village-like university complex with numerous buildings and its own minimarket, gas station and a sports center; the 400-year history of the university, especially contrasted with the less-than-40-year old history of my home institution, felt equally beyond comprehension. During my stay I also gained new perspectives to many of the contested and much-debated developments that are now taking in place the Finnish university world. Concerns related among others to the position of PhD researchers, funding, internationalization, financial cuts, publications and measuring success and progress are equally shaping everyday life in the academia elsewhere as well.
My stay abroad was of course not solely motivated by professional reasons. I enjoy the feeling you get in a foreign country when the very basic things in your everyday life are not simple anymore; when it takes ages to find what you are looking for in a grocery store, when you have to google up how to use the municipal garbage bins and when you spend a whole weekend freezing in your woolly socks and wearing two cardigans just because your roommate is away and you have no clue how to use the gas heater of your flat in a stereotypical-Dutch 1930s red brick row house. I was also impressed by the city’s strong cycling culture – everyone cycles everywhere and cycling is made safe, fast and easy through traffic arrangements which systematically prioritize bicycles over cars – and constantly amazed by the short distances from Groningen to practically anywhere: in the same three hours you drive from Rovaniemi to Oulu, you can end up anywhere within the country or even to a couple of neighbouring ones. I also got the chance to experience the world-famous Dutch football mania when during the world championships the whole city turned orange with flags, accessories and people dressed up in orange from head to toe for one whole long summer month.
The thing one doesn’t always come to think of when eagerly planning a stay abroad is that the limited time away will inevitably come to an end; another one is that you tend to forget that being elsewhere always also means missing people and missing out on many things at home. In any case, when you are finally able to pronounce the name of the district where you live in a way that people actually understand you, remember to always check the weather app for rain showers before going outside and think that a slice of bread sprinkled with hagelslag indeed qualifies as a breakfast, it is already time to go back home and no matter how good home is, it does take some getting used to.
The research visit was funded by the International Relations Office at the University of Lapland and a travel grant provided by the Lapland Regional Fund. A million thanks to the funders as well as everyone in Groningen and at home for the possibility and the support.
Text and photos: Hanna Lempinen