Month: October 2019

Confronting and engaging Russia in the Arctic takes resolve and patience

The celebration of the anniversary of liberation of Kirkenes by a Russian operation (called the “Tenth Stalin’s shock”) was properly solemn and impeccably good-neighborly, even if Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov found it necessary to voice criticism of Norwegian policy. Russia also found it opportune to stage a large-scale exercise of the Northern Fleet submarines… Read more »

Gulf States Are Making Their Way to the Horn of Africa

The Gulf States are looking for new allies in the Horn of Africa, in a battle for hegemony in the Middle East. With their deep pockets and big appetites these countries are using economic investments, new military bases, and strategic political alliances to change geopolitics on both sides of the Red Sea.

How Conflict Leads to Biased Development Aid

With two special reports (which can be found here and here) released by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) just after the summer, the awareness of the consequences of climate change and the measures needed to limit these impacts is higher than ever before. Regrettably, there is not a one-to-one relationship between responsibility and consequences, and… Read more »

Open Knowledge Beyond Replicability

For today’s blog in our series marking International Open Access Week, we asked Marta Bivand Erdal to reflect on some of the opportunities and challenges of the open science agenda for social scientists working with qualitative methods. Both quantitative and qualitative methods play an important role in the work our researchers do here at PRIO,… Read more »

Mission Impossible? Creating a Dialogue between Research, Policy and Practice Communities

On the surface, it should be easy. Practitioners and policy makers always require better knowledge to make informed decisions, and academics (nearly) always seek that their research makes an impact in the “real” world. Yet this rarely works out. In most cases academic-practice-policy dialogues, forums, meetings and conferences rarely produce the envisaged coming together of… Read more »

“We need to build bridges”: Project Leader Marianne Dahl and GPS Director Torunn L. Tryggestad on the Women, Peace and Security Index

The Women, Peace and Security Index is one of the most comprehensive measures of women’s well-being around the world. This collaboration between PRIO and the Georgetown Institute for Women, Peace and Security (GIWPS) goes back to 2016. Funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Index ranks countries based on indicators of women’s inclusion,… Read more »