Former YoungCAS workshop leader receives research funding

Margherita Paola Poto has been granted funding for a project that builds on her research at the Centre for Advanced Study (CAS).

Back in 2018, Margherita Paola Poto, a researcher at the Faculty of Law at UiT The Arctic University of Norway (UiT), led the YoungCAS workshop on Indigenous Law and Methodology.

The weeklong, intensive workshop was held July 2-7, 2018 and brought together scholars from around the world for a crash course in how to derive legal principles from stories. In 2020, CAS’ programme for younger researchers was extended and revised into the current two-year Young CAS Fellow programme.

Poto and her colleague Giulia Parola have now been granted a four-year research grant from the UTFORSK programme administered by Diku - The Norwegian Agency for International Cooperation and Quality Enhancement in Higher Education. Their project, An Exchange Program on Empathy, Compassion, and Care in Water Governance, from the Perspective of Integral Ecology (ECO_CARE) will receive NOK 2,6 million.

A collaborative project between Brazil and Norway

Bringing together research and education from Norway and Brazil, Poto and Parola will lead a team with the aim to rethink and reinterpret water rights through empathy (the ability to comprehend and share the feelings of others), compassion (the ability to feel together) and care (the ability to take restoring actions).

‘The goal is to enhance our study programmes and develop groundbreaking research with an innovative model of collaborative water governance (CWG), built on a platform of critical legal and community-based research (the CL&CBR platform) from the perspective of integral ecology,’ Poto said.

‘The innovative CL&CBR platform consists of modular courses developed with academic and non-academic partners within existing study programmes (UiT, Unirio, UFRRJ, Legal Creatives LLC, LegalHack LTDA and the Chiquitano indigenous people from Vila Nova Barbecho and other aldeias in Brazil). The dissemination of the project results will have societal, environmental and scientific impacts aligned with the Horizon Europe Strategic Plan 2021-2027 and Agenda 2030.’

What did the YoungCAS workshop mean for this grant?

‘The YoungCAS award in 2018 initiated an incredibly rich journey for me and my research fellows,’ Poto said.

‘Thanks to the training we received from the scholars Val Napoleon and Rebecca Johnson, we continued exploring the richness of indigenous methodology and law in our fields of study - environmental protection, indigenous law and ecofeminism.’

‘YoungCAS sparked in us the joy to create a community of care, attentive to one another’s needs and the needs of our planet,’ Poto said.

‘We have already accomplished remarkable research results, which include several co-authored books, an illustrated handbook, teaching and training courses, and many scientific articles. Thank you, CAS!’

Published 11 June 2021, 12:00 | Last edited 02 March 2023, 4:54