The International Stage

The University of Bergen is heavily involved in international co-operation. The growth in international activities has been particularly great since the beginning of the 1980s.

The 1990s brought new challenges to the University. Researchers' personal contacts in other countries have been supplemented by international networks. The University of Bergen holds formalised bilateral collaborative agreements in research and education with institutions on every continent, including academic centres of excellence in Europe, USA and Asia. UoB researchers have had extensive collaboration with US colleagues for several decades, and in recent years co-operation through European research and education networks has become increasingly important. Since 1992, UoB has participated in more than 100 European education exchange (ICP) networks and participated in, or co-ordinated, approximately 170 projects in European research and education programmes. More than 1200 foreign students are presently studying at the University of Bergen. 

The University of Bergen is a member of several European university groups collaborating on education and research and exchanging teachers and students. In the Coimbra Group, the University of Bergen co-operates with some of Europe's oldest and most influential universities, in the Santander Group with important universities in southern Europe, while the Utrecht Network collaborates on exchanging students all over Europe. These contacts are important for the University of Bergen, notably because such networks give access to information about potential academic partners and sources of funding of international programmes. The development of international multimedia projects extends co-operation in new ways, both at the level of structural networks that link universities and through networks involving individual departments and research groups.

For a number of years UoB has collaborated closely with institutions of research and higher education in developing countries, most notably in Africa and Asia. Since the early 1990s, UoB has been a major partner in the Norwegian University Committee's Programme for Development Research and Education. Currently, researchers from Bergen are participating in more than 20 programmes with partner institutions in 12 countries.

Collaboration on education and research - geographic overview

Scandinavia
UoB participates in Scandinavian student exchanges through the NORDPLUS programme:

• UoB co-ordinates 11 networks including the "Free-mover" network in which more than 20 institutions take part.
• UoB also participates in some 35 networks with other universities and colleges of higher education throughout Scandinavia.
• Some 50 students go abroad on the NORDPLUS programme every year, while about 35 foreign students come to UoB.

Through the NORFA programme established by the Nordic Council of Ministers UoB participates in activities in higher education in the Nordic countries, the Baltic countries and north west Russia.

Europe
UoB participates in the EU's student exchange networks, such as the Socrates-Erasmus and the Leonardo programmes.

• In Socrates an institutional contract has been signed with 210 educational institutions.
• About 200 students from UoB leave Bergen on Erasmus scholarships every year, while some 150 foreign students come to UoB. Most UoB students travel to the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Ireland.
• UoB participates in several Leonardo student exchange projects with European universities and industry.

UoB participates in several major institutional networks:

• The Coimbra Group, with another 34 European universities.
• The Utrecht Network, with another 26 European universities.
• The Santander Group, with another 27 European universities.

UoB has participated in large educational network projects on open distance learning such as:

• Co-ordinating the "ACO*HUM" - a more than 100 partners network for advanced computing in the humanities.
• The Comnet Network; Community Network for European Education and Training, in which more than 100 European member institutions co-operate on the use of databases and the Internet. 

EU's Framework Programmes for research and technological development: UoB was involved in 90 contracts in the Fourth Framework Programme, of which 24 were co-ordinated by researchers from UoB.

Subjects particularly well represented in EU research:

• Marine research and fisheries: UoB hosts a Large Scale Facility in marine biology - The "Marine Pelagic Food Chain" from 1996-98, extended in the Fifth Framework Programme as a Research Infrastructure. UoB also runs several FAIR and MAST projects within fisheries/aquaculture. 
• Environmental research: UoB participated in large MAST and ENVIRONMENT projects on climate studies in the Fourth Framework Programme.
• Medicine and Health: UoB is designated as a WHO collaborating centre within "Health Promotion" and for "Information on Vaccines and Vaccination Policy" through its Centre for Health Promotion and its Centre for International Health respectively, also holding several INCO and BIOMED contracts.
• Information technology: UoB is a European "centre of excellence" in high performance parallel computing holding several ESPRIT contracts.
• The "Bergen Computational Physics Laboratory" has been designated as a European Research Infrastructure, receiving 200 European researchers until the end of 2002.

UoB co-operates with Eastern and Central European states within social science, humanities, dentistry and medicine, and natural sciences both through EU- and national funding.

North America
UoB researchers have for several decades had extensive collaboration with US partners, especially within medicine and natural sciences, where many UoB researchers have spent shorter or longer research periods at US universities. UoB has an institutional collaboration with the University of Washington and the Memorial University of Newfoundland through a programme for researcher exchange.

Recently UoB became a partner in "Consortium for courseware construction" consisting mostly of US partners.

Africa, Asia, the Middle East and Latin America
Involvement with countries on these continents is given high priority in the University's programme of international activities. The Norwegian Committee for Development Research and Education (NUFU) co-ordinates efforts in competence building in developing countries. The University offers students from developing countries M.Phil./M.Sc.-level training with the possibility of continuing to doctoral level. The UoB has more than 30 programmes taught in English. This process both benefits the individual student and is a part of the work of building up a network with institutions on these continents. 

Projects in research and education with funding from the Norwegian Council of Universities' Committee for Development Research and Education (NUFU).

• 1992 - 96: 17 research programmes with a total value of around NOK 48 million.
• 1996 - 99: 23 research programmes with a total value of around NOK 68 million.

The main purpose of the NUFU-programme is to build competence and capacity in research and education at university and research institutions in developing countries.

UoB is member of the Tibet-Norway Network, to facilitate co-operation between Tibet and the Tibetan exile community in Dharamsala.

Through the Department of Zoology and the Institute for Fisheries and Marine biology, UoB collaborates with Japanese universities within aquaculture and marine research.

There is an extensive collaboration with Chinese universities in chemical engineering/ chemometrics and social sciences involving both student and researcher. The UoB is one of the founding universities of the Nordic Study Centre at Fudan University, Shanghai.

Centre of International Health has for many years been actively participating in international collaboration related to health problems in several countries in Africa and Asia in fields such as nutrition, leprosy, immunology, reproductive health, to mention a few. The centre has recently received formal status as a WHO Collaborating Centre for its work on developing new vaccines.

More specific information about UoB's international activity (agreements, programmes, networks, projects), can be found at Office of International Relations.