On August 23, the 2nd Summer School on Internet Governance, organized by the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ in partnership with St. Petersburg State University, came to a close.
Out of the 127 applications sent to the Summer School, 81 participants were selected for the preparatory stage, and then the 40 best pupils were admitted to the main stage. Thirty-four students graduated from the school and will receive supplementary education certificates from St. Petersburg State University. The eight best essays will soon be published on the Summer School website.
The participants hailed from a greater diversity of countries: last year, the Summer School on Internet Governance was attended by students from five countries, and in 2021, applications came from 12 countries. The wider reach is largely attributed to the school’s distance learning format.
The Summer School’s work was highly praised by both the organizers and students. Grigory Yarygin (Ph.D. in Political Science), an associate professor of the US Studies Department at St. Petersburg State University and a teacher at the school, pointed out the students’ strong qualifications, their drive to gain new knowledge and readiness to share their experience with the other participants. “The students of the Summer School on Internet Governance completed the curriculum of the challenging training program fast and with great interest. Finishing their training, the teams of students from different countries presented the results of their group research projects on topical and acute subjects related to the interplay between contemporary digitization processes and environmental conservation in the form of mind maps. The team creative thinking in combination with the students’ various sets of knowledge let them show an original perspective of the problems, highlight the important points, identify and prioritize their key elements, and determine the comprehensive and integral ties between them,” said Grigory.
Darya Matyasheva, who took part in the Summer School, had the following to say about the project: “The Summer School has completely changed how I think about internet governance, which I saw as centralized and somewhat state-centered. The school helped me understand internet governance as a multifaceted and constantly expanding process, where everybody can find a place.”
At the Summer School’s final meeting, Director of the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Andrey Vorobyev congratulated the participants on graduating from the school and wished them further success. “I was impressed by the students’ thorough projects. They did not leave unattended even very narrow segments of internet governance, for which I give them my special thanks! We do have the future, we do have people to implement serious projects, and we do have those who can piece together a great puzzle of global processes,” he added.
Now the school graduates will be able to take part in major international forums on internet governance. Some of them will be held as early as this year: the Asia Pacific yIGF in September and the global IGF in December. And Coordinator of Youth Projects at the Coordination Center for TLD .RU/.РФ Ilona Stadnik invited the participants to join the center’s educational and discussion projects, which include its Youth Council, Digital Reality discussion club and others.
