Twenty-five years of development research

In the course of the past 25 years the University of Bergen has distinguished itself both nationally and internationally through its goal-oriented cooperation in research and education with universities in developing countries.

A number of academic and administrative positions have been earmarked for this purpose, and significant amounts of internal funding have been allocated to the field. Development research is one of the two main areas of emphasis in the University’s Strategic Plan, and we have set up special centres for development research in which all of our faculties except the Faculty of Law are active. In the field of global health research, the University of Bergen has the largest research and education group in Scandinavia , comprising 14 academic positions, eight of which are chairs, while 130 MSc and PhD students are studying global health problems. More than 60 research projects are coordinated by the University.

These efforts have produced particularly good results within the NUFU programme, in which the University has been one of the main participants since it started in the early 90s. We have also put a great deal of effort into developing English-language programmes of study, which have been recruiting students from developing countries financed by the Quota Scheme and the NORAD Fellowship Programme since the mid-90s. The Masters programme in Gender Research and Development is Norway ’s most popular English-language MSc programme, attracting more than 400 applicants from developing countries for the ten places available.

The University of Bergen has long-term institutional cooperative agreements in place with Makerere University in Uganda , research centres in Tanzania and South Africa and institutions in Vietnam , Bangladesh and Malaysia . In Tibet , the University has been involved in NORAD-supported projects in Lhasa since 1995, and has taught more than 20 members of staff of Lhasa University . One important feature of our work in development research is that we have managed to a great extent to combine these different elements in appropriate ways and integrated our efforts into the regular academic work of many of our own prestigious academic groups.

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