NEXT Summer School on Urban Nature-Based Solutions

Published by sanja

Deadline:  31 May 2018
Open to: citizens of any countries in the world
Venue: 15– 26 August 2018 in Mahilioŭ (Belarus)

Description

The NEXT summer school will be a vibrant mixture of interactive sessions, field trips, and group work in a unique Eastern European setting, designed to give participants hands-on project and research experience with nature-based solutions for smart cities. After getting familiar with the state-of-the-art field and analytical tools, learning about local and global challenges, visiting five local case study sites in Mahilioŭ (each characterised by several interrelated environmental, land-use and social conflicts), participants will form groups, identify their focus topic, and do several days of supervised group work, followed by the presentation of their ideas and findings to the school faculty and stakeholders.

The goal of the group work is to identify a particular urban development challenge, get a multi-angle understanding of the problem, then either 1) propose a vision and a solution to address it with a feasible project plan, OR 2) develop research proposals containing the research question, its justification and research methodology. Student reports would be collected and made available to all participants, stakeholders, and partner universities for curriculum development and learning purposes. Participants and faculty are encouraged to re-develop the final reports into academic papers. Students will be awarded a NEXT Certificate of Completion at the end of the course.

The NEXT summer school will be a valuable learning experience for everyone, but having a great time is also a summer essential. All 40 participants will be students or young experts, therefore we would like everyone to have a memorable time with us in Mahilioŭ!

Eligibility

  • Motivated individuals with academic or professional background related to physical planning, architecture, environmental management, policy and/or technology, ecology, geography, policy science, economics, or any other relevant backgrounds that have to do with the quality of urban landscape, ecosystem & biodiversity protection in cities, and planning process or urban design in general are eligible to apply;
  • The applicants should have at least the first degree, although in some well-justified cases (e.g. sufficient professional experience in a relevant field), this requirement can be exempted;
  • The application to open to the citizens of many countries in the world;
  • The program does not discriminate on the basis of gender, religion, nationality, social strata, cultural or sexual preferences.

Costs

The scholarships are available for German, Central/Eastern European, and other outstanding applicants.

You can find more information about the financial details and logistics here.

How to apply?

In order to apply, please fill the application form.

In addition, upon the completion of the application, the applicant has to send compulsory annexes to the email next.school2018@gmail.com.

The compulsory annexes include:

  • Cover letter, briefly explaining the purpose of the application, and outlining relevant qualifications;
  • Copy of the ID page(s) of the travel document (passport);
  • Copy of diplomas confirming the latest academic degree obtained (e.g. specialist, B.Sc./B.A./B.Eng., M.Sc./M.A./M.Eng., Ph.D.);
  • Document certifying language proficiencies (where relevant; citizens of EU countries and/or applicants with academic or professional experience in the English-speaking environment are exempt for such proofs; the reason for exemption should be mentioned in the Cover letter);
  • Full CV (in any format) with the list of published works (where relevant).

All the annexes shall be joined in a single pdf file, and named according to the following template: Last name_Nationality.pdf, e.g. Navumau_Belarus.pdf or Schulz_Germany.pdf.

For more information, please visit the official web page.