Why should universities and academics in the North and South collaborate?

This conference opens the discussion about academic cooperation vs. academic competition. Is it really so that academic collaboration with so-called weak and vulnerable universities in the South may be detrimental to competition for those who are rated high?

Programme for the conference

And, why should universities in the South accept university collaboration as “development aid” given the fact that these universities have first-hand experiences with global challenges, and therefore access to knowledge on their own about environment degradation; energy failures; poverty; inequality; destructive forces inherent in global capitalism; health problems; and repressive working conditions.

Is it possible to (re)build open gift-relations where we follow our academic interests in an ongoing exchange of knowledge, whether these lead to improved strategic positioning of a university or not?

This conference is in particular oriented towards contextualising the Norwegian NORHED program (The Norwegian Programme for Capacity Development in Higher Education and Research for Development) but not limited to this.

We welcome all interested academics to present a paper or attend the conference and contribute to the discussion.

Read the full call for abstracts (pdf)

Please submit your abstract by March 1, 2015.