NorDev25: Solidarity, social justice and sustainability to be held at NMBU 24-26th September 2025

Illustrasjon mennesker

Welcome to the 8th Joint Nordic Development Research conference (NorDev) to be held at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU) in the Fall of 2025.  The theme of the conference is “Solidarity, social justice and sustainability”: Nurturing academic-civic solidarity, fostering social justice, and cultivating collaborations in an era of uncertainty”. NorDev25 is organised by NMBU, with support from the university’s Global South Working Group, and the Norwegian Association for Development Research (NFU).

The conference will gather researchers, scholars, students, policy makers and civil society actors from the Nordic counties and from collaborating universities and partners in other parts of the world, including the Global South, to discuss how to strengthen solidarity and social justice across borders and secure progress towards social, economic and environmental sustainability and equality for all.

Call for Abstracts

The Call for Abstracts for NorDev25 is now open!

We are calling for paper abstracts to the Open Panel Sessions listed below. Submissions of abstracts of no more than 250 words can be sent to conference-nordev25@nmbu.no.

Deadline: Wednesday, April 9th.

In order to be considered for inclusion in the program, please indicate clearly the number and title of the panel that you wish to contribute to.

We are also aiming to accommodate a limited number of panels for paper submissions that do not fit under the themes of the open panels listed below. If your paper does not fit withing a pre-identified panel, please label your submission with “Undefined Panel”.

List of Open Panels inviting Abstract submissions

Background

Growing inequalities, geopolitical instabilities, political polarization, new and protracted conflicts, anti-democratic and nationalistic tendencies and environmental and social injustices linked to unsustainable development trajectories and the “green transition” within and beyond the Nordic countries and Europe threaten to undermine academic and civic freedoms, human rights and development gains and efforts worldwide. The need for collaborative efforts, and critical thinking on “the global development project” and the root causes and solutions to the interlinked sustainability challenges of our times has never been greater. Yet while Nordic universities and development research environments have traditionally played a key role in championing global perspectives, and pursuing collaborative, internationally oriented research and teaching approaches, these activities are under increasing threat. Reforms in academic funding models (leading inter alia to the introduction of study fees for international students in Norway last year), changing geopolitical realities, and new and changing development assistance priorities and modalities are undermining the “global classroom” and weakening possibilities for international collaboration and solidarity. There is an urgent need in this changing context for enhanced Nordic cooperation and rethinking of the roles, responsibilities and possibilities for Nordic development research environments to foster and support inclusive and just transitions to sustainability both at home and abroad. The role of Nordic universities in contributing to inclusive and safe spaces for cross-cultural dialogue and fostering academic-civic solidarity and long-term institution building and reconstruction in the context of increasing geopolitical instabilities, war and protracted conflicts are also important and urgent topics.

Forum for Development Studies.

Welcome to NMBU

Hosting NorDev25 fits well with NMBU's Strategy for 2023-2030 “Investing together in a sustainable future”. The university’s international profile and mission aim to contribute to the well-being of the planet through high-quality research and study programmes that enable people all over the world to tackle major global challenges linked to the environment, sustainable development, human and animal health and welfare, renewable energy sources, food production, and land- and resource management. NMBU has experience from institutional cooperation with universities in the Global South spanning 60 years and has played a major role in nation-building in Norway since its inception in 1859.

We look forward to welcoming you to Norway’s most beautiful campus in September 2025!

  • Keynotes speakers, panelist and contributors

    Uma Kothari (Confirmed Keynote speaker)

    Uma Kothari

    Uma Kothari is Professor of Migration and Postcolonial Studies at the Global Development Institute, University of Manchester. Her research interests include colonial legacies and decoloniality; postcolonial travel; island geographies and the power of stories. Her most recent book, Critical Global Development, was published in 2023. She is currently a Leverhulme Major Research Fellow on the project ‘Touring Britain in the 1950s: the adventures of postcolonial travellers’.

    Olle Törnquist (Confirmed Keynote speaker/panelist)

    Olle Törnquist

    Olle Törnquist is a Swedish global historian and Professor Emeritus of Politics and Development at the University of Oslo, Norway; earlier at Uppsala University. He has written widely on radical politics, development and democratisation. His main empirical focus since the 1970s has been Indonesia, India and the Philippines, with Scandinavia and South Africa and Brazil as reference cases. The results were recently summarised in In Search of New Social Democracy: Insights from the South – Implications for the North (Zed-Bloomsbury).

    Andrea Ordóñez Llanos (Confirmed Kenote speaker/panelist)

    Andrea Ordónez Llanos

    Andrea Ordóñez Llanos co-founded Southern Voice, a network of over seventy think tanks from Africa, Latin America & the Caribbean, and Asia leveraging southern evidence and analysis to promote fair global development debates. An economist by training, Andrea was previously Research Director at Grupo FARO, a think tank in Ecuador. She aims to ensure that new voices and ideas from the Global South are heard across regions to advance some of the most complex problems of our time. Her research interests are social policy, public finance, development financing, and international cooperation. She is a member of FCDO’s International Development Expert Group, the International Scientific Advisory Board of the German Institute of Development and Sustainability (IDOS), and a Publish What You Fund board member.

    Vivian Price (Researcher and Filmmaker)

    Vivian Price

    Vivian Price, PhD, Professor at California State University, Dominguez Hills & former union electrician, is a researcher and filmmaker for US and international projects on labor and climate justice. She was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Liverpool, a Fulbright specialist in Norway, working with the WAGE team at the University of Oslo on the perspective of oil workers on climate change, where she directed several video projects including Talking Union, Talking Climate. Price is a member of the Climate Industry Research Team for the Canadian Building Trades Union project on climate literacy in the construction industry. She is directing short films as part of “Transition: action, concepts, debates and strategies - an international comparison,” a study based in the Leeds School of Business and is a visiting scholar at the University of Eastern Finland working on a film on workers and environmentalists in the context of Finnish forest climate sink, as well as serving on the research team for the Critical Minerals Just Transition Listening Project (Sloan Foundation).

    Presentation of the Keynote Speakers as a pdf-file
  • Registration deadlines and costs
    Registrant categoryEarly Bird - until May 15thRegular from May 16th
    Students (Bachelor, Master) and retirees/emereti (registration opens from May 1st)1 200 NOK1 350 NOK
    Early career researchers (PhD, Post docs)2 500 NOK3 000 NOK
    Scholars bases in and travelling from non-OECD countries2 000 NOK2 500 NOK
    All others3 500 NOK4 000 NOK

    Conference dinner September 25th (500 NOK) comes in addition to the conference fee.

    You can also make donations when you register.

Registration

Sponsors / Supporters

EADI- og NFU-logo