Recipients of The Citizen Scholarship

"Being part of an interdisciplinary environment that can assist with different perspectives and understandings of my findings will be a great advantage"

- Nina Marie Larsen from Faculty of Psychology

Nina Marie Larsen is in her final year of the integrated master Professional studies in psychology. She is engaged in environmental psychology and how psychological knowledge can be employed in facing climate change and climate challenges. This interest was sparked as she spent an exchange year in Cape Town, South Africa during the strict restrictions following the Cape Town water crisis.

“Everyday life was characterized by environmentally friendly behavior to reduce water consumption. I became interested in the factors that make people form environmentally friendly habits and how these habits are maintained”, she says.

The specific topic of her thesis is Norwegian citizens' habits when it comes to traveling by plane for vacation and whether social norms or previous vacation habits are related to whether one intends to reduce the number of flights for vacation purposes after the corona pandemic.

Larsen says she applied for DIGSSCORE’s Citizen Scholarship as she wished to be part of a supportive research environment while writing her thesis. She points to the positive aspects of being part of an interdisciplinary environment that can assist with different perspectives and understandings of her findings. Furthermore, she emphasizes the importance of cooperation between the social sciences and psychology. “I think such collaborations are important in order to provide knowledge-based political measures to achieve environmentally friendly behavioral changes”, she says.

I applied for the Citizen Scholarship as I thought it would be a unique opportunity for me to access representative data, which will strengthen the credibility of my research

- Helene Klyve from Department of Geography 

Helene Klyve is pursuing a master’s degree in Geographies of Sustainable Development. During her bachelor in Global Development Studies at the University of Agder, she learned how unfair the climate crisis is. This made her realize that climate- and environment studies was the direction she wanted to head at. The preliminary title of her thesis is "Climate change and adaptive behavior changes".

Klyve argues that “There will not be major, revolutionary societal changes without individual changes, but at the same time, policies are often needed to steer citizens’ behavior in a particular direction”. Committed to questions concerning whether individual behavior changes are necessary to bring about a sustainable world, she is going to assess how young people in Norway perceive the need for individual lifestyle and consumption changes to limit emissions and alleviate environmental degradation.

“I applied for the Citizen Scholarship as I thought it would be a unique opportunity for me to access representative data, which will strengthen the credibility of my research”, Klyve says. Knowing from the beginning that she wanted to collect data for her master thesis from an online survey, the Citizen Panel seemed like a perfect fit for her with the existing research unit on Climate and Environment.

Klyve would like to pursue a professional career within climate and environment abroad – if she survives the master’s thesis.

Larsen and Klyve will both be part of the thematic research unit “Climate and Environment”. We look forward to seeing the results emerging from their different points of departure. Good luck!