Institute of Transport Economics, Department of Economics.
As a Ph. D-represented in the Ph.D. program board I want to contribute to the work of including and facilitating good cooperation between external Ph.D. candidates and Ph.D. fellowships at UiO and the challenges of maintaining good discussion forums as more forums have been digital in recent years.
As an external candidate myself, I experience several benefits of being able to be part of an environment directly connected to the university – one of them being the academic insight highly relevant for the development of the thesis and personal academic expertise. I believe that this opportunity is given in varying degrees, and sometimes happened randomly – which is unfortunate. There is a potential to ensure that information is distributed - to ensure information about the social and academic event is provided to (external), whenever those candidates could be invited.
On another note, one often hears that networking and discussion of ideas should be an important part of the PhD-journey. Joint courses at both the faculty level and for given departments can often be a starting point to establishing contact with academic peers. Since the pandemic, there is a reduction in physical discussion forums both temporarily but to some extent more permanently – as a home office is used to a larger extent. Facilitation and encouragement to use such forums are especially important as a proportion of Ph.D. candidates have no experience with this.
On a personal note, I started my Ph.D. in 2020 while working as a researcher at the Institute of Transport Economics for the last six years, since 2016. My educational background is from the University of Bergen where I earned a master’s in economics. My Ph.D. research covers policy effects and the environmental perspective regarding car ownership and car use – however, my earlier research has also covered: the valuation of time and other time components, cost-benefit analysis, and freight transport, and its transformation to zero-emission vehicles.