BUP zaprasza: szkoła zimowa, seminarium i konferencja

03-10-2025

BUP winter school on coastal and marine development

Science by the Coast will be held at Hel Marine Station and focus on coastal and marine development in the Baltic Sea Region. The winter school will take place from 2-6 February 2026. All bachelor’s, master and PhD students at BUP participating universities are invited to apply.

Participants will explore local strategies to address challenges along the Baltic Sea coastline and gain insights they can apply in their home countries. Additionally, students will enhance their research skills, while PhD students will gain valuable experience supervising student projects.

The winter school will consist of workshops, excursions, and lectures exploring the following topics:

Introduction to the Hel Peninsula and the Puck Bay
Societal Development vs. Biodiversity
Environmental aspects of area management
Socio-economic aspects of area management
Offshore activities – Marine Spatial Planning

A key part of the winter school is the case studies that accepted students will conduct in small groups under the supervision of PhD students. In the weeks before the winter school, students are expected to prepare questions and outline their case study plans. During the event, each group will collect data, consult experts, study key indicators, and learn to draw conclusions to better understand coastal development in the Baltic Sea. On the final day, the students will present their findings to their peers.

The winter school at Hel Marine Station is the first of three events connected to the Swedish Institute-financed project 'CoMaDe – Coastal and Marine Development through Collaboration and Interdisciplinary Learning’.

Those students who are accepted to take part in the event are expected to gain the following:

Improved knowledge of the Baltic Sea environment and its importance for regional societies and economies.
Insights regarding different environmental indicators related to the Baltic Sea.
Practical, interdisciplinary approaches to solving environmental problems.
Skills in intercultural and interdisciplinary collaboration.

Seminar 'The War-driven Environmental Destruction in Ukraine: Naming, Understanding, Witnessing’

The seminar kicks off the international seminar series 'Rethinking Ukraine’s Environment: War, Ecocide, and Beyond’. This first seminar takes place on 9 October 2025, and it is titled 'The War-driven Environmental Destruction in Ukraine: Naming, Understanding, Witnessing’.

The seminar session will examine the environmental devastation caused by Russia’s war against Ukraine from different perspectives. The speakers will discuss the scale and nature of ecological destruction, explore the cultural and narrative frameworks that shape our understanding of it, and reflect on the relationship between ecocide and autoecocide (Presentations in English; Q&A in English or Ukrainian).

The speakers are:

Anna Kuzemko, Ukrainian botanist and environmentalist, Doctor of Biological Sciences, and leading researcher at the Institute of Botany of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine.
Darya Tsymbalyuk, assistant professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures and at CEGU (Committee on Environment, Geography, and Urbanization), University of Chicago.
Anna Olenenko, PhD Candidate in Media and Cultural Studies at the University of Alberta and a research assistant at the Kule Folklore Centre in its Faculty of Arts.

More information about the seminar can be found on the University of Alberta’s website.

Conference: Environmental Citizen Science in Conflict Zones for Accountability and Empowerment

This event, organised by the GROMADA project, will be held on 24 October 2025, at the Geocenter, University of Copenhagen, Denmark. The conference will be a multidisciplinary discussion on the role of citizen-generated data and citizen science in environmental monitoring within conflict zones, with a particular focus on Ukraine after and during the Russian full-scale invasion. We will bring together perspectives from academic institutions, civil society organisations, policymakers, and Ukrainian students to explore the legal and social dimensions of participatory research in this context.

The keynote speakers are: Pier Carlo Sandei (Senior Programme Officer at UNEP), Jan Ortgies, Head of Legal at The Register of Damage for Ukraine (Council of Europe), and Dr. Ivan Rusev, Head of research department at National Nature Park Tuzlivski lymany (Ukraine).

This conference is open to all, free of charge, and it will be held in person in Copenhagen. However, recognising the dire situation and ongoing travel restrictions affecting Ukraine, the organisers are also offering the possibility for online participation to ensure everyone can join, regardless of location or circumstance.

Read more about the conference and register to attend on the Gromada website.