The 7th Nordic Development Research Conference 2023 has an open call for paper proposals.
The main theme of the conference is “Co-creation for transition towards a sustainable society” and it will take place in Uppsala, Sweden in August 21-23. The conference is being organized by Uppsala University and the Swedish Development Research Network.
The deadline to submit paper proposals is on March 1st, 2023.
This week we will introduce you to one of our board members and Co-chair of NFU: Jason Miklian.
Jason has been a part of NFU for 5 years and is a key member in our organization. He became a part of NFU because he thinks that given how diverse the topics housed under the “development studies” umbrella are, he feels it is essential for scholars both in Norway and the Nordics more broadly to have the opportunity to untie and grow together, especially given the challenges that development studies and adjacent fields are facing globally.
He has two main research areas: 1. Business, development and peacebuilding. 2. Climate and Conflict.
He chose his research fields due to a mix of interest and happenstance! He started his career as a South Asia studies scholar, then became interested in the connections between business and conflict in places of “economic underdevelopment”, as the Indian government put it. This led to his PhD at Noragric in development studies, with a qualitative / mixed-methods focus studying the role of the Maoist conflict and extractive firms on development.
He currently works for the Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo and his main projects now are an NFR-funded qualitative collaborative project on the role of small businesses in crisis and urban fragility, and an NFR mixed-methods project on the role of business and development on conflict in Africa.
Since he is living in Bogotá, Colombia at the moment, he is enjoying the sunshine and wonderful people while enjoying a bit less needing to get up early for the occasional 4AM call with his Oslo colleagues. 🙂
In his opinion, development studies is an worthwhile field because in an era of increasing specialization (yet hosting demands to be more cross-cutting and interdisciplinary), development studies provides an ideal platform for understanding complex societal relations in a way more holistically and critically-oriented than many other point-specific fields. In a time of increasing global uncertainty over inequality, climate change, and international order he believes that we are overdue for a renaissance in development studies, and he is excited for NFU to be a part of this leading edge.
For his more recent works, he chose to share with us a recent narrative non-fiction book on the Liberation of Bangladesh and the climate-conflict links therein, called The Vortex. Even though it is a less academic work, he is still very proud of it and thought it would be very intersting to share it.
This week we will introduce you to one of our board members and Co-chair of NFU: Randi Solhjell.
Randi has been a part of NFU for 10 years and is a key member in our organization.
Her research area is: Cross-disciplinary social scientists, I have worked on topics including statehood in contested areas (easter DR Congo) and gender-based violence in war and conflict. I am currently finalizing research on the topics on policing hate crime and prevention of violent extremism. In my upcoming position (2023-2027) I will be part of the project “JustExport” led by Prof. Kjersti Lohne at the University of Oslo, Institute of Criminology, focusing on how Scandinavian states engage in penal export internationally. And she currently works for the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, the Faculty of Law, The University of Oslo.
She chose her research field because she have always sought perspectives from ‘unkowns’ – people and societies I want to learn more about. It can be both within my home country Norway but also from places more distant from where I am situated (Nepal, Liberia, Chad, DR Congo). This has led me to different topics and societies.
And she believes that development studies is an important research area because it opens your mind to a world of injustice, difference and new knowledge fields. Knowledge is not taken for granted in a Eurocentric manner but critically explored theoretically and methodologically.
To access some of her most recent work, please follow the links below:
NUPI invites to a breakfast seminar to be held on February 9th at 9:00 about Norwegian aid policies and trends in the Nordics.
The event is being organized in cooperation with the release of a special publication of the journal Forum For Development Studies, which focuses on trends, similarities and differents in Nordic development aid.
There will be speakers from different organizations, such as ReddBarna, NUPI, Norad, CMI, Foreign Affairs Department and Expert Group for Aid Studies, which will provide the perspective from academia, government and NGOs in this important issue.
One of the key themes of the seminar will be the reduced aid from Norway and the use of aid resources being redirected to Ukraine and ukrainians refugees.
The seminar is a hybrid event, registration is required for those attending physically, but not to watch it online. The seminar will be held in Norwegian.
For more information about the event and to register for it, please follow the link below:
This week we will introduce you to one of our board members and our current lead Co-chair of NFU: Arnhild Leer-Helgesen.
Arnhild has been involved with NFU for 4 years and has taken the challenge of heading our board in the beggining of 2022. She joined because NFU is a network of Norwegian scholars working with global development issues, but NFU also works closely with the other Nordic associations for development research and the European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI). Conferences and different activities help her keep track of ongoing debates, conferences, and publications. There is also a need for an association like NFU to unite researchers in the broader field to be able to advocate for knowledge-based policies and practices.
Her PhD was on religion and development and the role of faith-based institutions in Latin America. And she is currently working in a project on different understandings of gender across contexts, together with colleagues from Makerere University and University of Dar es Salaam.
She chose her research field because she have had an interest in international development, Latin America and religion since the start of her studies. Before her PhD she worked in international development cooperation, and her research interests are results of questions raised during these experiences.
Arnhild believes that development studies is an important field because it is a field where you get to and need to work with colleagues and other people from different contexts and you continuously reflect on power relations and situated knowledge. You meet researchers with an engagement that goes beyond the academic environment.
She currently works at the Department of Global Development and Planning at University of Agder (UiA).
Her current work involves being the project leader of the project “Gender and digitalization across contexts”, where she focus on different ways of understanding and teaching gender. She is also initiating research much closer to home, looking into how perspectives of global inequality are communicated in kindergartens.
To access some of her recent work, please follow the link below:
This week we would like to introduce our student coordinator Julia Baldanza. Julia has been working with us at NFU since the beggining of September 2022.
She joined NFU because she believes that having a strong network connecting people working in development is important to allow them to share experiences and enrich the field and she wanted to contribute to making that happen.
Her main tasks are providing support for our board and being in charge of the social media accounts, as well as serving as a point of contact for those who wish to publice upcoming events, courses, conferences and workshops. If you would like to have NFU publicize your event, please reach out to her through nfucoordinator@gmail.com .
She is currently a master’s students in Global Development at the University of Agder and is writing her thesis with a focus on gender and health. Her main topics of interest are gender and politics.
Coming from South America, she believes that the development field is important because it can be essential in changing our world and that the latests changes in the field allowing for more perspectives from the global South to be heard show how much the field has to grow.
