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2023

The Nordic Education Model: Conclusive events

The Nordic Education Model-project welcomes you to its final conference.

Time and place: Sep. 14, 2023 2:30 PM – Sep. 15, 2023 4:00 PM, Undervisningsrom 1, Georg Sverdrups hus (day 1) and Auditorium 3 at Helga Engs hus (day 2). Both at University of Oslo, campus Blindern

As a part of the comparative research project NordEd, where the purpose was to examine the Nordic Education Model, a final conference will be held on 14 and 15 of September 2023.

The project examined four different features: knowledge, curricula and subject lines, teacher cultures and teacher training, and policy-making and reform work.

The research group represents large professional diversity within various disciplines. The project has sought to provide broad and critical perspectives on the emergence, sustainability of some common values, and design of the national education systems. The research group has emphasized both current and historical aspects of the Nordic Education Model.

The conclusive events are open to everyone. The programme is listed below. The programme parts that are described in English, will be held in English. The others will be held in Norwegian.

Programme

Thursday 14 of September

  • 12.15–14.15: Workshop for young scholars.

  • Contributions by Afshan Bibi and Elin R?dahl Lie, commentators Brit Marie Hovland and Synne Myreb?e. Invitations and programme will be distributed. Please notify Kirsten Sivesind if you would like to attend.

Diskusjonsforum om pedagogikkens faglige legitimitet og status

  • 14.30–15.05: Det lange 1968 i norsk pedagogikk. Kim Helsvig.
  • 15.15–15.50: Hva var pedagogikk? Kunnskapstriangelet pedagogikk/ utdanningsvitenskap 1970–2020. Harald Jarning
  • 15.50–16.00: Plenary discussion. Chair: Kirsten Sivesind 
Friday 15 of September

Nordic Education Model outreach and stakeholder event

  • 12.00–12.20: Welcome and brief introduction. Tore Rem and Inga Bostad
  • 12.20–13.05: Critiques meet author
    • The Nordic Education Model in Context. Historical Developments and Current Renegotiations. Eds. Daniel Tro?hler, Bernadette Ho?rmann, Sverre Tveit and Inga Bostad.
      Reader: Merethe Roos 
    • Schoolteachers and the Nordic Model. Comparative and historical perspectives. Eds. Jesper Eckhardt Larsen, Barbara Schulte and Fredrik Thue.
      Reader: Berit Karseth 
    • Discussion led by Daniel Tr?hler
  • 13.05–13.15: Pause
  • 13.15–14.15: H?ydepunkter fra prosjektet ?Den nordiske utdanningsmodellen?
    • L?rerutdanning og profesjonalisering i Norge – noen diskurser. S?lvi Mausethagen
    • Likestilling som pedagogisk ideal – Fra kollektivt fellesskapsprosjekt til individets ansvar for ? mestre livet? Elin R?dahl Lie
    • New knowledge and new opportunities for professional development among Norwegian school teachers, 1927–1937. Afshan Bibi
  • 14.15–14.25: Pause
  • 14.25–15.10: Panel om l?rerutdanning i Norden: Hva kan vi l?re av hverandre? Deltakere: Dina Knudsen, S?lvi Mausethagen, Steffen Handal, Turid L?yte Harboe og Jonas Bakken. Ordstyrer: Jesper Eckhardt Larsen
  • 15.10–16.00: Mottakelse. Hilsen fra dekan Rita Hvistendahl

Questions concerning the conference can be directed to Linn Evy Iversen.

Exploring the Impact of Social Policies on People’s Lives: Nordic Welfare States in a Comparative Perspective

Time and place:  – , University of Oslo

Socioeconomic scarcity has had a bearing on people’s lives in economic, social, and political terms. Although welfare states have been quite successful in developing far-reaching social insurance systems to protect their citizens, their effect has been uneven.

Thus, this workshop aims to explore how socio-economic scarcity and various social policies, separately or together, impact people’s lives – with a special attention to their political opinions (including redistribution preferences), social attitudes, democratic participation, evaluation of their institutional systems, and party preferences.

Here, we adopt a broad conceptualisation of welfare state and social policies, and encourage comparisons across different welfare states including the most generous one in the Nordic countries. Therefore, please submit your proposal even if your research does not include any Nordic country.

The workshop

The workshop will last two days, and the selection of papers will be motivated by a demand for cross-disciplinary and multi-method approaches. The workshop plans to bring together scholars from political science, sociology, social policy, public administration, history of economics, and related fields. The selection will stress the need for a variety of methodological approaches – combining quantitative and qualitative techniques as well as the policy analysis and examination of the historical trajectories of the welfare state developments. Women, junior scholars, and other academically underrepresented groups are especially encouraged to apply.

There is no participation fee. We will provide selected meals, and accommodation for all participants. In addition, there are a few travel grants available, granting preference to junior scholars. Please include your interest in a travel grant in the submission email.

The workshop is generously funded by NordForsk through the ReNEW research hub, and the Research Council of Norway through the Welfare State Support and Political Trust (WELTRUST) project.

Programme

8 June, Thursday

  • Panel 1: Electoral participation and voting
    • Chair: Paul Marx
    • Tim Vlandas, University of Oxford Do Pension Benefits Mobilize? (with Michael Ganslmeier, and Margaryta Klymak)
    • Giuseppe Ciccolini, European University Institute It Takes a Village: Deindustrialization, Rootedness and Voting
    • Paul Maneuvrier-Hervieu, University of Milan Offsetting Manufacturing Decline: The Political Effects of State Subsidies (with AnneMarie Jeannet)
  • Panel 2: Gender dimension
    • Chair: Franco Bonomi Bezzo
    • Maria Grasso, Queen Mary University of London The Gender Generation Gap in Preferences for Social Spending and Redistribution: A Comparative Analysis (with Rosalind Shorrocks)
    • Anna Helg?y, University of Oslo Working in the family: Rethinking part-time outsiders’ risks and welfare attitudes
    • Abderrahman El Karmaoui, Mohammed V University of Rabat, Morocco Water and gender inequality: exploring the impacts of water scarcity on rural women in Morocco
  • Panel 3: Changing welfare states
    • Tobias Tober, University of Konstanz Digitalization and the Green Transition: Different Challenges, Same Social Policy Responses? (with Marius Busemeyer, and Sophia Stutzmann)
    • Serap Saritas, University of Oslo Eco-Social Policy Proposals and Welfare States: The Eco-Social Contract by UNRISD in the light of social reproduction framework
    • Achim Goerres, and Jakob Kemper, University of Duisburg-Essen Political Solidarities in Novaland: Can we Simulate the Experience of States, Economies and Social Policies in a Virtual Online State? (with Jan Karem H?hne)
  • Panel 4: Attitudes among public
    • Chair: Miroslav Nem?ok
    • Arno Van Hootegem, University of Oslo Politicising welfare state redistribution: How political discourse influences support for equality and its ideological divides
    • Giacomo Melli, University of Trento Where I Stand and What I Stand For Subjective Social Position and Attitudes towards Redistribution
    • Leo Azzollini, University of Oxford Unemployment and Attitudes towards Migrants in Europe: A Multilevel Analysis

9 June, Friday

  • Panel 5: Perspectives on social policies
    • Chair: Anne-Marie Jeannet
    • Giuliano Bonoli, University of Lausanne Who deserves the spot? Attitudes towards priorities in access to subsidized childcare (with Mia Gandenberger, and Carlo Knotz)
    • Ellen Stewart, University of Strathclyde “I cannot fault the NHS”: unravelling satisfaction and support in narratives of healthcare (with Fadhila Mazanderani)
    • S?ren Christensen, Copenhagen Business School, and Roskilde University Organizing People's Homes: Associative Housing Governance in the Nordics
  • Panel 6: Insecurities and deprivation
    • Chair: Staffan Kumlin
    • Georg Picot, University of Bergen Why We Need Minimum Wages: Pay, Recognition, and Economic Citizenship (with Christian Schemmel)
    • Franco Bonomi Bezzo, University of Milan Then and Now: Comparing early and later experiences of Deprivation on Civic Behaviour (with Laura Silva, and Anne-Marie Jeannet)
    • Queralt Tornafoch Chirveches, University of Southern Denmark Insecurity and the Welfare State: Closing the Security Gap? (with Kaitlin Alper, and Peter Starke)
  • Concluding remarks

Panel debate on Deep Seabed Mining

Sustainability Transitions - exploring the role of Nordic business through radical interdisciplinarity.

Organised by Futuring Nordics, Sustainability Lab and Sustainability Law as part of UiO:Norden- ReNEW's 6th annual Nordic Challenges conference, Oslo 24–26 May 2023.

Time and place: May 25, 2023 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM, Aud. 2, Rom 6113, Domus Juridica, University of Oslo

Panelists

  • Harald Brekke, Senior geologist in the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate, chairman of the legal and technical commission under the International Seabed Authority (ISA)
  • Fredrik Myhre, Marine Biologist, Team Leader Oceans at WWF-Norway, Executive Director at Hjelp Havets
  • Alla Pozdnakova, Professor of law (International Law, Law of the Sea, Space law, EU/EEA Law) at the Scandinavian Institute of Maritime Law, University of Oslo
  • Helge Ryggvik, Historian and researcher at the Center for Technology, Innovation and Culture at the University of Oslo
  • Lise ?vre?s, Professor of Geomicrobiology at the University of Bergen and President of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters (DNVA)

Moderator: Andreas Ytterstad, Professor of climate journalism at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Oslo

Background

The need for systems-level change to mitigate grand, societal challenges has become increasingly accepted among researchers, politicians and practitioners alike. Climate change (IPCC, 2021), ecological degradation (Steffen et al., 2015) and social injustice (Raworth, 2012) are examples of such systemic challenges in that they are complex, interconnected across sectors, actors, and resilient to change (Clayton & Radcliffe, 2018; Holling, 2001). Consequently, it requires companies and other organisations to rethink their value-creation structures through new ways of innovating, collaborating, and governing. However, efforts to intervene and direct systems-wide changes are exposed to high degrees of uncertainty, long timeframes, and ultimately, at risk of unintended and unwanted effects.

A growing community of researchers is investigating how to facilitate such transformations  in a just and safe manner in recognition of planetary boundaries and social foundations (Raworth, 2017); or, as it is increasingly becoming to be described as Sustainability Transitions (ST) (Loorbach et al., 2017).

Stimulus for the panel

The recent impact assessment of ocean-floor mining by the norwegian government has sparked a heated public debate in which interesting lines of conflicts are drawn. Conservation-perspectives are challenged by political and industry intesrests that argue such human-activity to be essential for green technological shifts. As such, it represents a unique opportunity to discuss, more generally, principles of approach to new frontiers of human activity that must acknowledge aspects of justice and sustainability.

The Roundtable

The questions we hope to address during the roundtable

  • Who and what is governing the transitions to an economy that secures social foundations for humanity now and for the future while mitigating pressures on planetary boundaries? 
  • What obstacles and opportunities does business experience when taking part in such transitions? 

The roundtable is based on a Dialogic Design approach, enabling a space for radical interdisciplinarity. This participatory, interdisciplinary and multi-stakeholder format facilitates a reflexive approach with knowledge brokering that has a long tradition in designerly practice (Sch?n, 1992). The Dialogic Design approach emerged to enable business actors, civil society, and academia to observe rigorous, dialogic process to sensemaking, decision-making and co-creation of more sustainable futures. The interactive roundtable consists of three activities:

  1. Some days before the roundtable, the participating practitioners and academics are presented with ideas in the form of provocations to stimulate reflection and discussion. Research Provocations (in the form of statements or short narratives) do not simply summarise an existing debate, theme, or body of scholarship; they actively seek to expand the scope of investigation through intrepid dialogue and stretching of mental models.
  2. During the first part of the roundtable, the participants will engage in a gigamap exercise (Sevaldson, 2018), mapping the obstacles and opportunities business experience when engaging in their sustainability transition. The gigamapping exercise creates a dialogical design space. The audience can walk around the table while the gigamapping takes place.
  3. During the second part of the roundtable, we have a discussion with all participants, where we reflect on the results and arrive at recommendations.

One purpose of the Futuring Nordics roundtable is to incentivise an UiO:Demokrati application.

Organizer

Sustainability Law, Futuring Nordics and Sustainability Lab

6th Nordic Challenges Conference

The annual ReNEW conference welcomes all scholars interested in the Nordics to Oslo 24-26 May. Paper abstracts must be submitted before 15 February.

Event Date: 24–26 May 2023

Location: University of Oslo, Domus Juridica, Kristian Augusts gate 17

Keynotes

  • Thomas Hylland Eriksen: The world’s most sustainable region?
  • Hélène Landemore (digital): How to open democracy: Do's and Don'ts from Iceland, Finland, and France. 
  • Jenny Andersson: Neoliberalism from the inside and out - historicising the market revolution in Sweden.

Host and organiser

UiO:Nordic

Manifesting the 21st Century Manifesto in Nordic Public Spheres

Workshop on the genre and function of  the "manifesto" in the 21th century, hosted in Aarhus 20-21 April.

Time and place: Apr. 20, 2023 – May 21, 2023, Aarhus University, Denmark

This call for papers is looking for participants for the inaugural 2-day conference and workshop of the international Manifesting the 21st Century Manifesto (MANIFEST) network.

The idea is to bring together participants from the humanities and the social sciences in a comparative examination and applied inquiry of the manifesto as it functions in the West more broadly.

2022

Ecologising History: Loss, Memory and Landscape Temporalities

Time and place:  – , Svanhovd Research Center, Finnmark

Course leader: Marianne Lien

Credits: 5 ECTS

Contact: Liv Christina Varen

Organizer

Department of Social Anthropology

Ecologising History: Loss, Memory and Landscape Temporalities

Time and place:  – , Svanhovd Research Center, Finnmark

Course leader: Marianne Lien

Credits: 5 ECTS

Contact: Liv Christina Varen

2021

Fixing for Future

Nordic perspectives on product repair 

Time and place:  – , Informatics Library

How can we build sustainability into our rapidly evolving world of technology? Social and environmental concerns, as the result of unsustainable production and consumption, have renewed focus on how to extend the lifespan of products through repair.

Fixing for Future is a symposium and transformative repair workshop, exploring the complexities surrounding product repair in a Nordic context. Confirmed keynote speakers and presenters from Finland, Sweden, Denmark, and Norway, from academia, industry, and other fields of practice, will contribute with research, experiences, and debate. The symposium will be opened by Mette Halskov Hansen, UiO’s Vice-Rector for Climate & the Environment and Cross-Disciplinarity. Keynote speakers are Dr. Sarah Cornell from the Stockholm Resilience Centre and Dr. ?dil Gaziulusoy from Aalto University, Finland. The symposium is hosted by Beate Sj?fjell from the Dept. of Private Law and Maja van der Velden from the Dept. of Informatics, both UiO.

Thematically, the symposium is structured around four themes representing the four interacting modes regulating sustainable behaviour, together forming the regulatory ecology of repair.

  • Markets and Business Models: market and business models for repair.
  • Laws and Labels: existing and proposed policies and regulation in the Nordics; the Right to Repair movement.
  • Social Norms and Practices: perspectives by repair practitioners and consumers
  • Design and Materials: design for sustainability and repairability

We are also excited to host a Transformative Repair workshop, in which we collaborate with Oslo-based architect and upcycler Ju?rgen Breiter. If you are a passionate advocate of repair for sustainability and upcycling, this is not to be missed!

This hybrid digital-physical event is part of two interdisciplinary research projects implemented by the Department of Private Law and the Department of Informatics: Futuring Sustainable Nordic Business Models and Circular Energy for a Sustainable Circular Economy.

For more information, contact Eleanor Johnson

Organizer

Sustainability Lab

Professors and Policy: Realising Impact or Jeopardising Academic Freedom?

Open lecture by Professor Jan Palmowski, Secretary General of The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities.

Tid og sted:  – , Domus Bibliotheca

In his lecture, Prof. Jan Palmowski will draw on his extensive experience of engaging as an academic with EU policymakers, to explore the tensions between academic freedom and political influencing.

Our scientific and societal challenges require a concerted and ambitious response from Europe's leading universities to engage with policy-makers on the European arena. However, in their quest to build ties with policy-makers in order to shape EU research policy and priorities, to what extent is there a risk that academics compromise their core values such as academic freedom and excellence?

Jan Palmowski has been Secretary-General of The Guild since 2016. He started his career at the University of Oxford before moving to King’s College London, where he became Head of the Faculty of Arts and Humanities (2008-12). He moved to the University of Warwick as Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Academic Vice-President (2013 to 2018). Jan is a historian of modern Germany and Europe, with a particular interest in contemporary German history since 1945.

The Guild, of which University of Oslo is a founding member, has established itself as a strong and distinct voice on the European arena dedicated to enhancing the voice of academic institutions. The Guild is committed to the pursuit of excellence, the importance of truth-seeking and trust-building as the foundation of public life, and the creation of new knowledge for the benefit of society, culture, and economic growth. Founded in 2016, The Guild comprises 21 of Europe’s most distinguished research-intensive universities in 16 countries.

Welcome by Pro-rector ?se Gornitzka and moderator will be Director of UiO:Nordic, Tore Rem. There will be served coffee/ refreshments.
The lecture will be streamed, and digital attendance requires no registration. 

2020

Webinar: The 2020 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health & Climate Change - the Oslo Launch

The links between health and climate change are undeniable. 120 world-leading experts have looked at more than 40 indicators for The 2020 Report of the Lancet Countdown.

Join us for the virtual Oslo launch to discover the new findings on December 4th at 13.00 CET.

Time and place:  – , Zoom (webinar)

Climate change is threatening the health of people around the world and it is no longer a future problem. Our food stocks are compromised, our land is burning, our air is polluted, and the hospitals and clinics we depend on are under increasing pressure. 

Yet, responding to climate change offers a brighter future for global health - cleaner skies, healthier diets, and more livable cities.

Launching amidst the COVID-19 pandemic, the report will reveal and explore the latest global health profile of climate change in the context of this unprecedented and challenging moment in time. 

Program

120 world-leading experts, including authors from 38 academic institutions and United Nations (UN) agencies spanning every continent have looked at more than 40 indicators for The 2020 Report of the Lancet Countdown on Health and Climate Change.

The Lancet Countdown: Tracking Progress on Health and Climate Change is an international research collaboration providing a global overview of the relationship between public health and climate change. The collaboration brings together climate scientists, engineers, energy specialists, economists, political scientists, public health professionals, and doctors from academic institutions and UN agencies across the globe.

The Lancet Countdown tracks the world’s response to climate change, and the health benefits that emerge from this transition.

Each year the findings are published in the Lancet medical journal ahead of the UN climate change negotiations. The data makes clear how climate change is affecting our health, the consequences of delayed action, and the health benefits of a robust response.  

Co-organizers

Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Norwegian Institute of Public Health, UiO: Global Health, UiO: Centre for Development and the Environment

Nordic Travels

Welcome to an international conference on travel literature hosted by The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Time and place:  – , The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters & Zoom

Exploring factual and fictional journeys through text, image and objects from the early nineteenth century until today, the conference aims to provide critical perspectives on established notions of "the Nordic".

The conference is funded by UiO:Nordic and The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.

Programme

Thursday 12 November (via Zoom)
  • Janicke S. Kaasa, Ulrike Spring and Jakob Lothe (University of Oslo): Introduction
  • Ulrike Spring (University of Oslo): Taking the North back home: Souvenirs around 1900
  • Alexandre Simon-Ekeland (University of Oslo): Fascinated Disgust: French Travellers and Whale Hunting in Northern Norway 1860–1914
  • Torild Gjesvik (Oslo): Knud Knudsen: A Travelling Photographer in Nineteenth-Century Norway
  • Andrew Newby (Unversity of Helsinki): My peregrinations in Old Norway” – Robert Wilson’s Norwegian Tour (1830) 
  • Kjersti Bale (University of Oslo): Travelling among Contemporary Ruins: Essayistic Self-fashioning in Marit Eikemo’s Samtidsruinar
  • Ellen Mortensen (University of Bergen): Trans-Atlantic Travels in Stories and Letters: Edvard Hoem’s Norwegian-American Family Chronicle
  • Janicke S. Kaasa (University of Oslo): Léonie d’Aunet’s Voyage d’une femme au Spitzberg (and its Norwegian translation)?
  • Jakob Lothe (University of Oslo): To travel hopefully is a better thing than to arrive”: Cecil Slingsby’s Norway: The Northern Playground (1904)
Friday 13 November - (via Zoom)
  • Elettra Carbone (University College London): Representations of Italy in Nordic Literature from the 1830s to the 1910s 
  • Anders Johansen (University of Bergen): Nansen as Ethnographer: Travelling in Time, Encountering Contemporaries
  • Peter Fj?gesund (University of Southern Norway): Nordic Stereotypes: A Critical Examination of the Traveller's Gaze                                                                     
  • Tyrone Martinsson (University of Gothenburg): Jan Troell’s Ingenj?r Andrées luftf?rd (1982), Related to Andrée’s Balloon Expedition in 1897 and to Per Olof Sundman’s Ingenj?r Andrées luftf?rd (1967) 

If you have any practical queries, please contact Gro Havelin at The Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters: gro.havelin@dnva.no  

Webinar with Sir Anthony Giddens: What next? Covid-19 and the future world order

UiO:Nordic and the Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM) welcome all interested participants to a webinar with Arne N?ss professor Anthony Giddens about the challenges of digitalization, robotization, and Covid-19.

Time and place: Sep. 17, 2020 2:00 PM – 3:15 PM, Zoom

Sir Anthony Giddens will talk about the ways in which the combined challenges of digitalization, robotization and Covid-19 will influence the political, economic and cultural landscape of modernity. The webinar consists of a brief introduction by Nina Witoszek, Sir Giddens' talk, and a Q&A session. 

Programme

The format of the webinar will be simple and informal, including three components:

  • Nina Witoszek (Project leader of the Arne N?ss Programme  at SUM, Oslo University): Brief introduction
  • Anthony Giddens: "Covid-19 and the Future World Order" (30 mins)
  • Zarlush Zaid (Law graduate/ LSE and former intern of Professor Giddens): Comments (10 mins)
  • Q & A (30 mins) Chair: Nina Witoszek.

Explaining Swedish Exceptionalism on COVID-19: Nordic Perspectives

Is the Swedish approach to Covid-19 exceptional? Can we explain the approach based on history or the political system? In this webinar we bring together scholars and scientists from the Nordic countries to try to explain the divergence. 

Tid og sted: 28. mai 2020 15:00 – 16:00, Zoom

Background

During the last two months, differences in Nordic approaches to Covid-19 have attracted global attention. Sweden's milder lockdown has puzzled observers that have associated the state with strong forms of social control, with its “corona model” now being hailed by the American right.

Moreover, Sweden’s divergence from its neighbors in the early stages of the lockdown has raised questions about the idea of a collective Nordic model.  It has triggered intense cross-Nordic debates – as journalists and opinion defend vigorously their own national approach – and provided a natural experiment for researchers. The differences between the Nordics provide a foundation for comparative research on managing pandemics in countries so often considered similar."

Weighing in on the ongoing debate, we seek to explain the Swedish approach from a Nordic perspective. The idea is to unpack 'Swedish exceptionalism', considering how or whether the difference in approach to Covid-19 is an exceptional case, or if it follows from the history and political context of the different Nordic countries. Bringing together scholars and practitioners from Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden, we hope to have a fruitful discussion on the political, administrative and social differences between the countries, in order to better understand the diverging Nordic approaches.

The panel

  • Bo Rothstein, Professor, University of Gothenburg
  • Bo Lidegaard, Author and Managing Director, Macro Advisory Partners-Europe, and former Editor in Chief of Politiken
  • Johan Strang, Professor, University of Helsinki
  • Kristin Sandvik, Professor, University of Oslo 

Moderators

Professor Tore Rem, University of Oslo / Professor Malcolm Langford, University of Oslo

Organizer

UiO:Nordic and Nordic Branding: Politics of exceptionalism

The UiO:Nordic Conversation

Nordic conditions: What happened to humanity?

Time and place:  – , Litteraturhuset i Oslo

Have our Nordic societies gotten colder? How do we respond to the refugee crisis and challenges related to integration?

NORDHOST, a UiO:Nordic research project, has examined how Nordic civil societies responded to the refugee crisis. How many should be allowed in? Who should they be? What responsibility do we assume, not just as state, but as society, by accepting refugees? And is civil disobedience a legitimate reaction to stricter immigration policies?

Professor of social anthropology Thomas Hylland Eriksen will give an introduction on the character of Nordic hospitalities. He will then be joined by ?sa Linderborg and Sturla St?lsett for a conversation about Nordic conditions. The conversation will be led by UiO:Nordic's director Tore Rem.

The UiO:Nordic Conversation is a new venue for discussion about current Nordic issues. Each Talk is introduced by researchers connected to the interdisciplinary strategic research area UiO:Nordic at the University of Oslo. These monthly events will highlight research that can offer new perspectives on both current topics and our shared history.

Organizer

UiO:Norden

2019

Young:Nordic: Shut-Up and Write session

Contact Amanda Cellini with any questions.

Tid og sted:  – , Georg Sverdrups Hus, UB-internt m?terom 4107

Kick-off lunch for the Young:Nordic network

Please join Unge:Norden for a semester kick-off lunch

30. okt. 2019 12:00 – 15:00, NIels Treschows hus, 12 floor

The lunch will provide us the opportunity to reconnect and meet new network members, discuss upcoming events for this semester and plans for 2020. We’ll also hear from the new UiO:Nordic Director, Tore Rem.

Arrang?r

UiO:Norden

Nordic Teacher Cultures - Education, Social Recruitment, Gender, Knowledge, Protestantism and Professionalism

The UiO:Norden project NordEd and the NOS-HS network Nordic Teacher Cultures Compared invite to an open morning seminar

Time and place: Sep. 26, 2019 9:15 AM – 12:00 PM, Aud 2, HE, University of Oslo

Program

  • Jesper Eckhardt Larsen – Introduction to the Nordic Teacher Cultures Compared network and pillar three of the NordEd project
  • Emil Marklund – Social and gender aspects of Swedish teacher recruitment in the 19th and 20th centuries
  • Beatrice Cucco – Initial teacher education in Denmark and Finland: the role of research-based knowledge for teacher professionalism
  • Fredrik W. Thue – Pietism, Professions and the Pedagogical State: Historical reflections on the origins of the Nordic welfare state.
  • ?l?f Gar?arsdóttir - Teaching at the eve of public schooling. Schooling arrangements and the profession of teachers in Iceland during the late 19th and early 20th century
  • General discussion

Open lecture: "U.S. higher education and inequality: How the solution became the problem”

Welcome all to this open lecture with professor David F. Labaree, Stanford University, USA.

Time and place: Aug. 14, 2019 9:15 AM – 11:00 AM, Room 231, Helga Engs hus, Blindern

About the lecture

At the start of the 20th century, higher education in the United States changed from being seen as a finishing school for the elite to being seen as an engine of social mobility. This was partly because college became the primary mechanism for gaining access to the new whitecollar occupations that emerged late in the previous century and partly because of the rapid expansion of higher education enrollment in a system that already had more capacity than demand. So college became both the way that middle-class parents could try to pass on social advantage to their children and the way that working-class young people could try to attain middle-class status. Enrollment grew rapidly in the first half of the century and then exploded in the two decades after the Second World War.

This paper explores how expanded access to higher education seemed to realize the goal of promoting social equality by providing opportunity for advancement while at the same time it established a pattern of distributing social positions on the basis of academic merit. It shows how the actual results in practice 3 served instead to preserve social advantage for those who already had it by creating a new caste system based on educational credentials.

The system sported a veneer of meritocracy that hid the way that it gave privileged access to its diplomas to families that already had superior amounts of cultural, social, and economic capital.

The lecture will be followed by a plenary discussionThis open lecture is a part of a PhD course held 12 -14 August  Educationalization – or: Why and how we think that education is the key solution to all kinds of problems and welcome you also to participate in the following open lectures:

  • August  12, “The educationalization of social problems and the educationalization of the world”
  • August 13, “Social problems and technological innovations: Motives of curriculum reform in the 1970s”

Organizer

CLEG and HumStud

Open lecture: "Social problems and technological innovations: Motives of curriculum reform in the 1970s"


Welcome all to this open lecture with Dr. Rebekka Horlacher, University of Zurich.

Time and place: Aug. 13, 2019 9:15 AM – 11:00 AM, Room 231, Helga Engs hus, Blindern

About the lecture

The lecture takes up the idea of yesterday’s presentation on the cultural reflex to solve social problems through education, focusing on curriculum reforms in the second half of the 20th century. It starts with the beginning of the 20th century, when great educational hopes were placed in film and radio, whereas today, these hopes reside in newer computer technologies and in e-learning in particular.

One of the high times of solving social problems by education were certainly the decades after World War II, when the United States launched a massive change in curriculum to catch up to the Soviet level of scientific education.

Also in Europe, the 1960s and especially the 1970s were a time of intensive school reform, on the curricular and on the organizational level. England, Wales, and Germany, for example, introduced a comprehensive school reform, and Switzerland discussed school reforms by introducing new subjects or teaching strategies in the curriculum, e.g., programmed instruction, sex education, or media education as responses to perceived social challenges or ineffective old strategies. As a rule, these reforms were accompanied by debates expressing expectations and demands of schooling.

The lecture will be followed by a plenary discussion

This open lecture is a part of a PhD course held 12 -14 August  Educationalization – or: Why and how we think that education is the key solution to all kinds of problems  and welcome you also to participate in the following open lectures:

  • August  12, “The educationalization of social problems and the educationalization of the world”
  • August 14, “U.S. higher education and inequality: How the solution became the problem”

Organizer

CLEG and HumStud

Open lecture: "The educationalization of social problems and the educationalization of the world"


Welcome all to this open lecture with Professor Daniel Tr?hler, University of Vienna / University of Oslo.

Time and place: Aug. 12, 2019 9:15 AM – 11:00 AM, Room 231, Helga Engs hus, Blindern

About the lecture

Today it seems almost “natural” to assign perceived social problems to education. When, for instance, the United States of America saw their nation and the Western world at risk after the launch of Sputnik by the Soviet Union in 1957, it educationalized the Cold War by passing the very first national education law, the National Defense Education Act in 1958, expressing the view that “Education is the First Line of Defense.”

And when, a few years later, the environment had become an affair of public concern, for instance triggered by the book Silent Spring (Carson, 1962), endangered nature became educationalized, as expressed for instance in the Journal of Environmental Education (1969).

And when again, a few years later, in the United States the national crises after the Vietnam War, the oil crises in the 1970s, and the near collapse of the automobile industry in the early 1980s led to the perception of A Nation at Risk and the conclusion of an Imperative for Educational Reform, this expressed the educationalization of the economy and economic policy.

A rising teenage pregnancy rate in the 1960s led to an educationalization of sex through the introduction of sex education in schools, which gained new urgency with the outbreak of HIV/AIDS in the 1980s. Museums were made more attractive by the invention of museum education around 1990.

And when immigrant adolescents in the suburbs of Paris and Lyon protested violently in 2005, their behavior was not seen as a reaction to their poor living conditions or poor life chances but as an expression of the wrong education, as France’s Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin stated in 2005.

Human life is a site of what UNESCO has called ‘lifelong learning’ and propagated since 1962, a phenomenon that was critically noticed (and explicitly labeled “educationalization”) in Germany as early as in 1929.

The lecture will be followed by a plenary discussion 

This open lecture is a part of a PhD course held 12 -14 August  Educationalization – or: Why and how we think that education is the key solution to all kinds of problems and welcome you also to participate in the following open lectures:

August 13, “Social problems and technological innovations: Motives of curriculum reform in the 1970s”

August 14, “U.S. higher education and inequality: How the solution became the problem”

Organizer

CLEG and HumStud

Summer School: Revisiting welfare capitalism in the Nordics: from Middle Way models to Neoliberal Experimentation?

Together with Oslo Summer School in Comparative Social Science and ReNEW, UiO:Nordic welcomes emerging scholars to the Summer School course: Revisiting welfare capitalism in the Nordics: from Middle Way models to Neoliberal Experimentation?

Time:  – 

In the post war era, the Nordics became known as particular socio economic models, built around redistributive welfare states, strong social democracies, and consensus oriented political cultures. The so called Middle Way inspired observers from the American Marquis de Childs to the French Jacques Servan Schreiber, and from the 1930s New Deal era to 1960s and 1970s debates on post industrialism.

Surprisingly, despite important changes in the Nordic welfare states at least since the 1970s onwards, notions that they represent a specific model of capitalist development, marked first and foremost by the role of welfare statism, have remained. Not least in social science and the comparative welfare state literature, the Nordics are still predominantly seen as resilient models in a surrounding world of neoliberal market societies, although some scholarships challenges this.

At the same time, Nordic scholars have since two decades highlighted the important changes in the ‘models’ following as a result of marketisation and privatization processes, and social scientists in the Nordics have also shown important and sometimes radical social changes in terms of inequalities and new patterns of economic, social, cultural and ethnic segregation.

Political scientists have gone from arguing that far right parties were a marginal and passing, nostalgic, phenomenon of ‘welfare nationalism’ –  toward understanding populism in the Nordics as a much more dominant feature and also, as an historically entrenched phenomenon that perhaps has to be understood as coming from within the historic foundations of the ‘model’ itself.

Objectives/outcomes

We aim with this course to revisit ideas of the Nordic models in the light of the far reaching social, economic, cultural and political changes in the Nordic countries since the 1970s on.

We insert these changes into a wider history of the Nordic models, their historic origins but also role as models of political economy in processes of global capitalism and transnational circulation of ideas of the 20th century.

We aim to introduce partly new perspectives to the teaching of the Nordic model – in particular the emerging literature on what a Nordic neoliberalism would be as well as discuss the Nordic model in the era of populism.

The course will be organized in a number of interlinked lectures. The lectures are more or less chronologically organized from the 1930s to the present. In order to link lectures with participants own research agendas and allow for constructive feed-back, the program will also include students presenting and discussing their own work.

Nordic Trends in Gender Studies - ReNEW Summer School

The ReNEW consortium and University of Iceland welcomes all PhD candidates and advanced MA Students in their last year in humanities or social sciences working on Nordic-related topics with an interest in gender issues to the first ReNEW summer school:

Time and place:  – , Reykjavik, Iceland

ReNEW (Reimagining Norden in an Evolving World) is a research hub established to enhance cooperation to develop new and path-breaking research about the Nordic region against the background of an increasingly challenging global context. Promoting mobility, exchange, high-level conferences, education, and outreach activities, it brings together six Nordic universities with world-wide connections. ReNEW Partners are University of Helsinki, University of Oslo, S?dert?rn University Stockholm, Aarhus University, Copenhagen Business School, and University of Iceland.

In collaboration with EDDA – Center of Excellence and the United Nations University Gender Equality Studies and Training (UNU-GEST) Programme, the first ReNEW Summer School will be held at the University of Iceland, Reykjavík, 15–24 May 2019, with the topic Nordic Trends in Gender Studies. Experts within the field will introduce students to four separate but interlinked pillars of current Nordic gender research: Intersectionality, migration and labour markets, post-colonialism, as well as trans issues and queer theory. The NORA Conference Border Regimes, Territorial Discourses and Feminist Politicswill take place in Reykjavík 22–24 May 2019, and is an integral part of summer school attendance.

Target Participants

  • PhD candidates in the humanities or social sciences working on Norden-related topics with an interest in gender issues.
  • Advanced MA students in their last year  in the humanities or social sciences working on Norden-related topics with an interest in gender issues.

Credits
You will receive 8 ECTS for this course, but how this is credited for your doctoral studies depends on your home department.

3rd Nordic Challenges Conference

The ReNEW conference 2019 on ‘Nordic challenges’ focuses on how democratic institutions and practices as well as culture and values are changing in response to the multiple global challenges faced by Nordic countries. 

Time and place:  – , Copenhagen Business School, Solbjerg Plads 3 - 2000 - Frederiksberg

Nordics have seen themselves as key players at the international and European level, often setting the agenda in a wide variety of issues, such as peace, welfare, socially-viable competitiveness, climate change and human rights. But global challenges such as migration and inequalities have intensified recently. As a consequence, the master narrative of globalization as a positive development for the Nordics as small, open economies, has been challenged by nationalist and protectionist agendas. 

Brexit and the election of Trump are the most significant examples of anti-globalization political reactions. The Nordic countries have, likewise, seen a shift from liberalism and openness, to a more nationalist and closed approach. International and European cooperation is being looked upon critically, and policies across various policy areas are more inward looking than previously. The intensification of global challenges has political and cultural repercussions, which will be discussed in the two semi-plenaries of this conference.

Panels may, amongst others, be proposed in the following topics:

  1. Nordic cooperation and region-building;
  2. Democracy, governance and law;
  3. Public policy, gender equality and labour markets;
  4. Imagining Norden - branding and Nordic reputation;
  5. Multiculturalism and globalization;
  6. Nordic culture, education and media.

We invite paper panels, book panels (author meets critics), and roundtable events around relevant themes, such as the above, related to challenges in the Nordic countries. We encourage scholars to invite leading scholars and practitioners as discussants or main participants in round tables.

2018

Images of the Urban North: “Grey heritage” in travel narratives in the 19th century

Time and place: Dec. 17, 2018 1:00 PM – Dec. 18, 2018 1:30 PM, Sophus Bugge building, Seminar room 12, University of Oslo

“Green” and “blue” humanities are rapidly-growing research approaches: Both break with the traditional divide of nature versus culture and focus instead on the relations between land and maritime environments and humans.

Blue humanities try to move away from an emphasis on land territory and seek to understand the world from an oceanic perspective. Both have in common the desire to find new ways of understanding changes from a more-than-human perspective. Nordic researchers are increasingly using these approaches to understand images of and identity processes in Norden.

After all, natural heritage has for long been considered one of Norden’s decisive identification markers. We suggest that these images have to be seen in direct interplay with the human-built urban environment.

Taking as our starting point the towns and cities of Norden, we will ask how they affected and shaped ideas of Norden – and with Norden we mean both a topographical and cultural unit and a heterogeneous mixture consisting of different Nordic countries, regions, cultures and topographies.

We propose that these grey aspects of Norden are a necessary backdrop to understanding the power of nature in narratives of the North.

We wish to inquire into the relations between blue, green and what we term “grey” heritage. How does climate affect our perception of the towns? We can ask similar questions about the ocean, rivers (and flooding or regulation), about beaches and their uses and so on. We wish particularly to enquire into the uses, images and imaginings (cf. Bernard Smith) of urban environment, its relevance, relationship to and interaction with uses, images and imaginings of nature.

Our path into this field of research will be through travel narratives from the 19th and early 20th centuries. We will start in the 19th century, when travelling started to become a major pastime across Europe and nation-building processes accelerated.

Programme

17 December 2018
  • Introduction
    Ulrike Spring (University of Oslo / Western Norway University of Applied Sciences): Grey, Blue and Green in a Nordic Perspective
  • Architecture and Nordic Urban Space
    • Iver Tangen Stensrud (Oslo School of Architecture and Design): “Europe is becoming dreadfully ‘used up.’” British travellers in Christiania around 1850
    • Even Smith Wergeland (Oslo School of Architecture and Design): ‘Riddled with smog, trash and dirt’. The grey heritage of Oslo’s East End
  • Green Spaces and Nordic Urban Space
    • Elettra Carbone (University College London): Mapping Norway: Edward Price’s Norway Views of Wild Scenery (1834) and its illustrations
    • Anna Bohlin (Stockholm University / University of Bergen): Circulation: Organisms and politics in Fredrika Bremer’s travel narrative of Copenhagen
    • Ruth Hemstad (National Library of Norway / University of Oslo): Images of the mundane North. Samuel Laing's political travel accounts on Norway and Sweden in a transnational perspective
    • Kristina Sk?den (Oslo): Catharine Hermine K?lle’s days in Sweden
18 December 2018
  • Water and Nordic Urban Space
    • Kim Simonsen (University of Bergen / University of Amsterdam): Fields of Knowledge - Travelling Back in Time Towards a new Future
      - Visual, Ecological and Material Aspects of Travel Writing: Urbanscapes, Socioscapes and  Ecological in Northbound Travelling European Men of Letters and in Design, William Morris’ travels in the North in 1871
    • Alexandre Simon-Ekeland (University of Oslo): Connecting exploration, polar nature and urbanity. About a commemorative plaque for Amundsen and Guilbaud in Troms? in the 1930s
  • Summing up and plans for the future
    Ruth Hemstad & Ulrike Spring: Grey, Blue and Green in a Nordic Perspective: Summing up
  • Plenary
    Grey, Blue and Green in a Nordic Perspective: Plans for the future

Contact

Ulrike Spring and Ruth Hemstad

The workshop is hosted by the Department of Archaeology, Conservation and History, University of Oslo, funded by the research hub ReNEW  (Reimagining Norden in an Evolving World) and organized by Ulrike Spring and Ruth Hemstad, in collaboration with the UiO:Nordic project The Public Sphere and Freedom of Expression in the Nordic Countries, 1815-1900.

The Nordic Model in American Politics

Seminar with Professor of Law, Michael A. Livingston, Rutgers University on the utopian and dystopian images of the Nordic model in the USA.

Time and place: Oct. 8, 2018 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM, HF-12, Niels Treschows hus

The historic Nordic Model involves a relatively high level of taxes combined with universal welfare benefits and a progressive approach to environment, gender equity, and other social issues.  Although the model has come into question in Norden itself, it retains a fascination overseas, especially in North America. The model is especially popular on the political left, because it appears to offer a high level of benefits without sacrificing individual freedom, creativity, andother values.

More recently, the Nordic countries have taken on a dystopian image among many on the North American right, who emphasize crime, social breakdown, and other problems allegedly resulting from a permissive society and high levels of immigration.

This seminar will consider the utopian and dystopian images of Norden and their connection with reality. The role of Nordic marketing efforts in creating and maintaining a positive image of the region will also be considered, together with the "rebound” effect of external critiques within the region itself.

2017

The UiO:Nordic seminar: Do Corporate Diversity Programs Work?

UIO:NORDIC and NORDICORE invites to a seminar with Professor Frank Dobbin on work-life equality

Time and place: Nov. 9, 2017 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM, Institute for Social Research, Munthes gate 31, Oslo

Program

  • Welcome: Haldor Byrkjeflot, UiO:Nordic
  • Presentation by Professor Frank Dobbin, Department of Sociology, Harvard University
  • Do Corporate Diversity Programs Work?
    Prepared comments: The efficacy of gender quotas for corporate boards in light of top-managers support of gender equality measures by Mari Teigen, Centre Director CORE, Institute for Social Research
  • General discussion

Abstract

Corporate initiatives to reduce bias in hiring and promotion, and promote workforce gender, race, and ethnic diversity, have been studied in the field and in the lab.  Most studies examine one or two initiatives at a time.  We use data from a national sample of corporations, over thirty years, to assess the relative efficacy of different approaches.  Efforts to control managerial bias generally backfire, leading to reductions in workforce diversity.  But efforts to engage managers in solving the problem, to promote intergroup contact, and to signal employer concern with work-life integration have consistent positive effects. 

The UiO:Nordic Seminar: What kind of future for Norden and Norden-research

Visiting scholar to UiO:Nordic, Johan Strang, presents CENS and his own Norden-related research:

Time and place: Oct. 11, 2017 2:00 PM – 4:00 PM, HF-12, Niels Treschows hus

UiO:Nordic visiting scholar Johan Strang presents CENS, its mission, education and research. He will also talk about his own research on Norden-related topics such as:

  • Nordic cooperation  (Nordic cooperation – a European region in transition, 2016)
  • The political and intellectual history of Norden (centre and periphery in the intellectual republic of Europe)
  • and the never-ending project on "how to understand Sweden" (the na?ve, though admirable Swedish universalism)

Espen Stedje (Foreningen Norden), Maria af Klinteberg Herresthal (Voksen?sen), toghether with Haldor Byrkjeflot (UiO:Nordic) and UiO:Nordic Research groups will comment on Strang's presentation.

The seminar is open to the public. Coffee and tea will be served.

The UiO:Nordic seminar: Hospitality and Justice – Perspectives from the context of Nordic Migration

UiO:Nordic research group NORDHOST presents its team and topics.

Time and place: Sep. 6, 2017 2:15 PM – 3:45 PM, HF-12, Niels Treschows hus

Hospitality and justice are topics that span all of NORDHOST’s subprojects to some degree. Furthermore, most subprojects also relate to some kind of resistance, whether from migrants or migrant advocates, or to critical reflections on political injustice in relation to migrant issues.

NORDHOST’s common, overarching question is: Is there anything specific about Nordic forms of hospitality which are developing in the encounters between arriving migrants and civil society receiving projects?

Program

  • Introduction
    Trygve Wyller
  • NORDHOST researchers, including all new Phds/post docs, present their subprojectsIncl.
    Helena Schmidt, Dorina Damsa, Kaia R?nsdal, and post doc from SAI (t.b.a)
  • Plenary discussion

The Nordic seminar: The Politics of Nordic Branding

Launch of a new UiO:Nordic Research Programme: Nordic Branding

Time and place: May 10, 2017 12:00 PM – 1:30 PM, Auditorium 2, Georg Sverdrups hus

The Nordic countries have been called ‘moral superpowers’ and ‘havens of gender equality’. But do these portrayals suggest the strategic development of a brand? Can the lens of branding help us better understand the idea and image of the Nordic Model and its use in politics? And is branding a positive or problematic phenomenon?

Program

Chair: Haldor Byrkjeflot

  • Nordic Branding, Malcolm Langford and Veronique Pouillard
  • Branding Social Welfare, Sidsel Roalkvam and Klaus Petersen
  • Branding Gender Equality, Inger Skjelsb?k and May-Len Skilbrei
  • Rights, Migration and Negative Branding, Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen and Kjetil Larsen.
  • Discussion

2015

The Nordic Seminar: The Nordic model as a development strategy

Can a model that works well for affluent homogeneous Nordic societies be applied as a development strategy in poor and heterogeneous countries?

Time and place: Oct. 12, 2016 2:15 PM – 4:00 PM, Stort m?terom, Georg Sverdrups hus (bak kantina i 2. etasje)

The Nordic countries are today among the richest countries in the world and many would agree that they manage to combine high productivity with an equitable distribution of resources. This has led both scholars and politicians to turn to the Nordic model for insight into how present day poor countries could develop. But can a model that works well for affluent homogeneous Nordic societies be applied as a development strategy in poor and heterogeneous countries? This is the question we want to highlight in this seminar.

Program

  • Kalle Moene (Professor, UiO): What can poor countries learn from the Nordic model?
  • Andreas Kotsadam (Senior researcher, Frisch centre): Nordic minds in African mines. Development lessons from mining areas.

This event is a part of the seminar series Norden-seminaret, hosted by UiO:Nordic. 

Organizer

UiO:Nordic and NoWeDe

Published Dec. 11, 2023 2:00 PM - Last modified Aug. 2, 2024 1:49 PM
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