PolarSTEP: Early career leadership fills polar research skills training gap
The early career-led UK Polar Network (UKPN) responded to asks from their members for practical field skills and science planning training to support confidence in fieldwork with PolarSTEP: Polar Skills Training for Early Career Researchers and Professionals. While universities and research institutes provide good training to students and staff, it is often technical and discipline specific and assumes a basic level of outdoor skill. Additionally, as much flexibility as there is in higher education programmes such as MSc’s and PhD’s their independent research projects often have loose yet pre-defined objectives. Early career researchers and those outside of academia can end up in the exciting position of developing a research proposal for a grant or planning fieldwork, without having structured training on the science planning process.
Building on lessons learnt in 2023 through delivery of a similar course in Dartmoor National Park, the 2025 Yorkshire Dales course walked participants through the science planning process from development of research questions, to permits and risk assessments. This set the scene for discussions on fieldwork planning, and outdoor skills.
With a mission to make polar science more accessible, the course directly addresses two key barriers to fieldwork – it creates a welcoming space to talk about taboo subjects such as toileting and menstruation, and recognises that peers who haven’t grown up camping, hiking, and doing outdoor activities don’t receive this basic training before going to cold, remote field sites.
Participants praised the course’s structure and content saying:
“Incredibly well plann[ed] training course with many unexpected topics that encouraged a new thought process.”
“The emphasis on interpersonal relationships was a huge factor in the course's success and meant we all got a lot more out of the other activities too.”
“It sometimes feels you should somehow know all of this, so it makes me nervous to ask questions that might be obvious. This explained everything from the ground up without being too basic or too intense. I now feel much more confident in what I need to keep myself warm, dry and safe.”
“There were absolutely no sessions that were not useful, I took some knowledge away from all of them.”
As a peer-to-peer initiative, this course offers an exciting chance to support leadership development, ensuring that early career researchers and professionals in the future continue to have access to this training. Following the Dartmoor course, three participants joined the UKPN committee in some capacity, and one co-delivered PolarSTEP, demonstrating how crucial these activities are to the sustainability of the organisation, as well as polar science. We’re excited to see what the PolarSTEP 2025 participants do next!
You can read more about the success of PolarSTEP 2025 in our engaging report here:
If you’re interested in sponsoring the course in 2026 or 2027, please reach out to us at training@polarnetwork.org.
If you’re an early career individual interested in future training opportunities, please sign up to our mailing list and follow us on social media!
Polar Fieldwork – Navigating Knowledge, Impact, and Responsibility
By Chloe Nunn and Maud van Soest
In March, the UK Polar Network teamed up with the UK Centre for Ecology & Hydrology and Scott Polar Research Institute to tackle the question: what is the impact of polar research and should we be more rigorous in what and how we measure? Our workshop, facilitated by Emily Barrett, focused on equipping early career researchers (ECRs) with the tools and language to engage in conversations regarding research impact covering everything from carbon footprints to ethics.
We convened in Bangor at the UKCEH office from March 13th to 14th for two half day workshops. It was a busy schedule, and participants actively engaged in sessions on responsible fieldwork practices, ethics and impact, and evaluation methods. Through interactive discussions, case studies, and talks, participants deepened their understanding and contributed to the broader conversation on the impact and responsibility of researchers in the Polar regions.
Most attendees were in postgraduate programmes at universities and had a diverse range of involvement in polar research, from glaciology, permafrost, and microbiology to biogeochemistry and ecology, with many conducting fieldwork across Greenland, Svalbard, Antarctica, and the Arctic Ocean. Others’ work focused on things like outreach, events and community-based research. All participants brought a unique perspective to the discussions creating a rich dialogue. The openness and transparency with which participants shared also showed how welcoming and safe the space we created was.
Our key takeaway was recognising that all ECRs have common ground across disciplines, however the policy and guidance landscape in the UK around research impact is disaggregated and disconnected. The UK Polar Network is well positioned to address this moving forward given its focus on supporting ECRs and respect of the organisation within the UK polar policy community. The workshop organising team will be collaborating with members of the APECS RISE (Responsible Science Initiative) project team to publish a narrative on research impact topics alongside guidelines for advancing these dialogues.
This workshop, funded by a grant obtained from the NERC Arctic Office, builds on the UKPN’s track record of capacity building and facilitating networking within the ECR community. Based on training and membership surveys we will continue to deliver in person and online training across a variety of topics.
Photos by Chloe Nunn
Survey to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on the Svalbard science community
To anyone with research interests in Svalbard, please find below information about a survey to understand the impacts of COVID-19 on the Svalbard science community.
This survey will be used to make a strategy for the upcoming (2021) field season in Svalbard. Svalbard Integrated Arctic Earth Observing System (SIOS) invites all those who are associated with Svalbard science community including researchers/scientists, research management staff, logistics operators, academicians including students (PhD/Masters/Bachelors), and research station/facility/infrastructure staff, to respond to this survey. You can find more information and survey link here: https://sios-svalbard.org/News_20201209.
It will take approximately 15 minutes to complete this survey. The survey will be closed on 7 January 2021.
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How will we use the data and disseminate results from this survey? How will you get benefitted from this survey?
(1) SIOS will host a dedicated online workshop ‘SIOS responses to COVID-19 and the new normal - adapting our strategy for the future’ on 13 January 2020 (09:30 Am to 12:00 Pm CET) as a part of its annual Polar Night Week (PNW) event (11-15 January 2020). More information is available here: https://sios-svalbard.org/PolarNightWeek. Registration to PNW is open: https://sios-svalbard.org/PNW2021_registration. Your inputs to this survey will help us to shape and formulate the programme of this workshop. Preliminary results of this survey will be discussed during the workshop. We encourage all the participants of this survey to attend this workshop.
(2) Since the pandemic is still ongoing, your response will be used to develop new services and strengthen existing services at SIOS-KC to support your fieldwork activities during 2021.
(3) Finally, responses from this survey and the PNW workshop will be analysed by SIOS-KC, RSWG and authors from the Svalbard science community. We may produce a manuscript based on the response from the community to be published in a peer-reviewed journal. If we do so, all the responses will be used anonymously without revealing the personal identity of anyone responding to this survey. If you are willing to analyse resulting data and provide inputs to the planned manuscript as an author, please respond to all questions of the survey and do not forget to mention your name and email id on the question 1 and 2.