Read Valeriya's story below:
Currently, I am a PhD student on my final year, studying under a cotutelle agreement between Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv and Nord University Business School. Since September 2021, I am staying in Bodø to complete my research stay at Nord University. This gave me an amazing opportunity to study in the Norwegian university and opened a door to the world of international academia.
During my stay in Bodø, I completed obligatory PhD courses, in this way fulfilling course component for my PhD. Working on my thesis was intense to meet set deadlines and work a lot of my thesis, but also was very informative and full of new knowledge.
My first experience was in grasping the differences between doing PhD in Ukraine and in Norway. I understood that PhD in Norway is about learning how to produce research in the international scientific environment. Here, PhD students have a choice of writing thesis as a monograph or as article-based dissertation. I decided to go for four articles and kappa (an introductory chapter, which summarize all articles).
The topic of my PhD work has also changed. In the beginning, I planned to write about the investing aspect of personal finance and study the behavior of individual investors. However, the vector of my research transformed to a more general one. Now, I study different factors which influence people’s financial decisions and behavior.
After becoming a cotutelle student, I received two more supervisors (main and co-supervisor) from Nord University Business School, so now I am being guided by three amazing professionals from Ukrainian and Norwegian universities. I am very lucky to have an opportunity to receive useful advice and suggestions from all of my supervisors. Each time they help me to improve my work and, therefore, my research skills.
In February 2022 the war started in my country. This affected the possibility of data collection as I use a Ukrainian context for my empirical papers. Nevertheless, I managed to finish two of three empirical papers on trust and financial literacy among young Ukrainians. This was possible since I managed to gather enough empirical data before the beginning of the war.
In June I had my midterm seminar at Nord University Business School and presented main findings and progress that I achieved by that moment. After my presentation, I received very useful comments from my discussants, which helped me to plan how to improve my future work.
Now I am continuing working on my last empirical paper, improving other articles, and hoping to finish in time. My home country is now passing through terrible times, which affects me a lot. However, I hope that I will use my internationally recognized PhD degree and experience gained here in Norway for the future rebuilding of Ukraine.