News

The season of theses defenses is upon us again. In the next couple of weeks, 16 students will defend their master's theses at UW, with a smorgasboard of interesting topics.

The University Centre of the Westfjords kicked off the new academic year with an exciting Orientation Day for incoming students. Like previous years, the student group is international with a diverse background.

The Give Icelandic a Chance events are still in full swing and tomorrow, Tuesday, will see a take on Gislasaga, one of the Icelandic Sagas which partly takes place in Haukadalur by fjord Dýrafjörður. The event is held in collaboration with Kómedíuleikhúsið, the smallest professional theatre group in Iceland.

As is usual in August, we're all about Icelandic learning these days. Our three week beginners' course began yesterday with 19 participants. The Give Icelandic a Chance campaign is of course also in full swing and its various events suitable for the Icelandic learners, so we want to remind you of the objectives of the campaign; to give those who are learning the language a chance to use it as much as they can and have ability to, be patient, simplify and repeat their sentences and not demand that the learners speak perfect Icelandic. And last but not least, give Icelandic a chance and not shift over to English or some other language right away.

University Centre of the Westfjords is asking for the participation of as many residents in the Westfjords as possible in a survey for a research project on place appropriation.

School for International Training (SIT) in Vermont, USA, is looking for a new academic director for its study abroad program in Iceland. The job is a renewable, year long position, located at University Centre of the Westfjords in Ísafjörður. Application date is by 10 July and anticipated job start is 1 August. Click here for further information and application form.

As usual, the Graduation Ceremony took place on Iceland's National Day, 17th of June - which is the birth date of independense leader Jón Sigurðsson - as part of the celebrations at Hrafnseyri which is the birth place of Jón. This year's cohort was unprecedentelly large, receiving their certificates from the rector of UNAK and the UW graduate caps which are knitted hats with tassles, as a nod to the traditional Icelandic tail-cap.

A symposium in relations to Give Icelandic a Chance took place on Thursday, with a following workshop on Friday. The symposium was titled "How can a community support language acquisition?" and several speakers gave very interesting talks, which goes to show quite an ambition for teaching Icelandic to foreigners so that the language can be of proper use to them and make Icelandic society more accessible.

The course From extraction to attraction: Coastal communities in an era of leisure and tourism, which Patrick Maher teaches, finished last week. At the end of the course students made videos highlighting their perspective on Ísafjörður and its surroundings and the results are these three fun short films:

The Give Icelandic a Chance campaign continues into the summer and some very interesting events are lined up over the next few weeks, as can be seen on the poster here on the right.