Heidrun Knorr said it had always been a wish of hers to visit and work in Greenland and in October 2018, she had the opportunity to work in Nuuk for 2 weeks. The north2north mobility program allowed for the Danish professor to work at Ilisimatursarfik/the University of Greenland with fellow colleagues in the Department of Social Work.
Knorr said the opportunity was "quite different to teach students of various Greenlandic backgrounds in Greenland than teaching in a multicultural classroom at a Danish university." She was especially impressed with the Greenlandic students use of silence during group work which allowed for students to evolve the groups overall argumentation and learning of the subject - a practice that was new to Knorr. As a facilitator in multicultural settings, this experience proved beneficial for Knorr "this experience shows that we may still find approaches to group work and learning which might appear ‘new’ to us but which have been around for ages – we only need to be open to new experiences in for us unknown surroundings."
Not only did Knorr learn invaluable lessons from her teaching experiences in Greenland, she also had the opportunity to network with fellow colleagues and discuss possible projects collaborating with Danish and Greenlandic scholars.
Knorr's visit to Greenland was academically, professionally and personally valuable to her as her visit also showed "how warm, friendly and welcoming Greenlandic people can be despite the hardships they have to face". She said the stories from the Greenlandic people "made me understand what it means to live in a country as enormous and scarcely populated as Greenland; and they put things into perspective".
UArctic's north2north mobility program provides opportunities to study, teach and carry out research in different parts of the North.