Copius: Winterschool 2021
Dear all,
We are happy to invite you to participate in the 9th Winter School of Finno-Ugric Studies which will be held online on 1–5 February, 2021. The school is a part of the Community of Practice in Uralic Studies (COPIUS) strategic partnership, and this year it is organized by a team representing the University of Helsinki.
The Winter School will take place online (contact sessions will be held in Zoom), and it will involve the following activities:
A course on Inari Saami taught by Petteri Morottaja;
A workshop on online resources for Uralic languages including an invited lecture by Trond Trosterud;
Students’ presentations of their own current projects;
Possibly also an online social event related to Uralic languages and cultures.
It is not obligatory to participate in all the activities. You can decide yourself in which of them you would like to take part, and then simply indicate your choice in the registration form (you will find a link at the end of this message). Both the language course and the workshop involve group work which can be arranged either online or in person depending on the epidemiological situation and the recommendations of individual universities. The schedule of the group work is meant to be relatively flexible, so the groups will be able to decide which slots they use and in what way.
The preliminary schedule is the following (NB: the schedule is according to the Helsinki time, or EEST, GMT+2):
| Monday 1.2. | Tuesday 2.2. | Wednesday 3.2. | Thursday 4.2. | Frieday 5.2. | |
| 10:15 - 11:45 | Presentations | Group work/ Presentations | Group work/ Presentations | Group work/ Presentations | Group work/ Presentations |
| 12:00 - 13:30 | Inari Saami | Inari Saami | Inari Saami | Inari Saami | Inari Saami |
| 13:30 - 16:00 | Lunch break +Group work | Lunch break + Group work | Lunch break + Group work | Lunch break + Group work | Lunch break + Group work |
| 16:00 - 18:00 | Online resources: Introduction and group work | Keynote: Trond Trosterud | Exploring online resources, preparing reports | Students’ presentations on online resources | Students’ presentations on online resources |
| 19:00 - ... | Social events (TBA) | ||||
Here is some general information about the activities:
1. Inari Saami course
The course on Inari Saami will consist of contact sessions, group work, and individual tasks. The time slot from 12:00 to 13:30 is reserved for contact teaching, and the group work will be organized either in the morning slot (10:15–11:45) or in the afternoon slot (13:30–16:00). The teacher will distribute materials and preliminary exercises for the course by mid-January, so that the participants can start the learning process already prior to the Winter School.
2. Workshop on online resources
The goal of the workshop on online resources is to encourage the Winter School participants to explore various resources available online which either focus on Uralic languages or in which Uralic languages are well represented. The developer(s) of each resource will record a short (10–15 minutes) videopresentation of the resource and its functions and provide several tasks that can be performed by exploring the resource. Some of the resources will be also presented by Trond Trosterud in a keynote lecture on Tuesday, 2 February.
The videopresentations will become available in mid-January, and then the participants will be able to watch them, choose tasks and form groups of 3–4 people to work on them. It is also possible to choose a task to work on individually. During the Winter School week, the groups will have time to work on their tasks together during the slots allocated for group work (10:15–11:45, 13:30–16:00, and the afternoon session on Wednesday 16:00–18:00). On Thursday and Friday 16:00–18:00, the groups are expected to report their findings and share their experiences in an online seminar.
3. Students’ presentations
Those Winter School participants who would like to give a short talk (around 15 minutes) about their ongoing research projects are very welcome to do so. The exact schedule will depend on the number of presenters, but we have tentatively scheduled these talks for morning sessions from Monday to Friday (10:00–10:45 or 11:00–11:45 depending on the final schedule of other activities).
4. Social events
We have not yet decided whether we are going to organize any online social events in connection with the Winter School. If you have any suggestions as to how this could be arranged, feel free to share them with us.
Registration
The registration for the Winter School is now open.
We kindly ask you to register as soon as possible, preferably by 15 December. So far, the registration is only open to participants from the universities belonging to the COPIUS partnership, but on 15 December we will open the registration for the general public. Since the number of participants that the Winter School can accommodate is limited, we would like to encourage you to register before 15 December, in order to ensure your participation.
If you have any questions regarding the Winter School, please do not hesitate to send a message to Ksenia(ksenia.shagal"AT"gmail.com) and/or Janne(janne.saarikivi"AT"helsinki.fi). We are looking forward to welcoming you at the Winter School!
Best wishes,
Janne Saarikivi
Ksenia Shagal