Doctoral Candidate, Marta Vetier's reflections on the Doctoral Program

March 3, 2017

I received my masters degree in CEU’s MESPOM program in 2007, in the first batch of this very successful international masters program on environmental sciences, policy and management. After working for nine years as policy advisor, project leader and program director for Greenpeace and giving birth to two beautiful and active boys, I decided to return to academia.

During my masters studies I very much appreciated CEU’s international and transdisciplinary approach, high academic quality and great location, thus I decided to return to my Alma Mater for my doctorate degree. I enrolled in CEU’s PhD program in 2014 to research transboundary environmental governance in the Carpathian Mountain region: looking at what and how is driving cooperation among the stakeholders.

The first year of the PhD program equipped me with the theoretical and methodological knowledge and capabilities that I needed to be able to carry out top quality research and also with tools and methods to be able to teach. It also helped me to specify my own research project. Furthermore, the opportunity of being able to join courses of all other departments at the university allowed me to broaden my horizon to emerging and cutting-edge research disciplines. After having defended my research prospectus in the second academic year, I started pursuing my field work and preliminary data analysis with CEU’s financial support.

The interactions with other PhD students and professors from many countries and with different disciplinary backgrounds provides a highly stimulating learning and research environment, in which we can support and challenge each other and thus stimulate new thoughts, new approaches, new knowledge – and also new friendships.