Tag: Academia

Diversity in Norwegian Academia 2021

Diversity ensures democratic and epistemic legitimacy. Although the Norwegian research sector and higher education institutions have steadily improved at ensuring diversity in recruitment processes, there is still scope for improvement in utilizing the resultant diversity Recently, the Nordic Institute for Studies in Innovation, Research and Education (NIFU) and Statistics Norway released new statistics on diversity…. Read more »

Decolonization Gone off the Rails

This summer we have had the opportunity to read about the campaign to ‘decolonize academia’: the call to improve the representation of non-Western voices in the curricula of Norwegian educational institutions. The supporters of this campaign justify it on the basis that it will challenge ways of thinking in the sciences and humanities that were… Read more »

What Shapes Which Migration Flows We Study?

How might decolonising the academy intersect with academic everyday practice, for instance in the context of migration studies? As efforts to decolonise the academy are gaining force, not least in universities in the United Kingdom, such as at the School of Oriental and African Studies, questions about how this timely intellectual scrutiny can or ought… Read more »

Decolonize Academia!

Today the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) is holding a seminar titled Decolonizing the Academy. Our aim is for this seminar to start a national discussion about the legacy of the colonial era in Norwegian academia – both in relation to its formal structures and the ways in which we as researchers conceptualize and categorize… Read more »

Research Under Fire: Researcher Trauma and Conflict Studies

Political scientists debate whether the world is getting more violent or less. Regardless of where you situate yourself in this discussion, it does seem that social scientists are putting themselves into more violent situations than ever before. Especially within the field of political violence and conflict studies, students and scholars travel to active conflict and… Read more »

Research Apartheid

Academia has become its own battleground in the Israel-Palestine conflict. As a scholar of the Israel-Palestine conflict, I usually leave the Ben Gurion Airport with vivid images of checkpoints, separation barriers, demolished houses, crammed refugee camps, poverty, settlements, and soldiers. Earlier this summer, before the war broke out in Gaza, I visited Israel for the… Read more »