NorDev25: Solidarity, social justice and sustainability

Illustrasjon mennesker

Welcome to the 8th Joint Nordic Development Research conference (NorDev). 24-26 September at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU). 

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.

The conference gathers researchers, students, policy makers and civil society actors from the Nordic countries and from collaborating universities and partners across the world. We will discuss how to strengthen solidarity and social justice across borders and secure progress towards social, economic and environmental sustainability and equality for all.

NorDev25 is organised by NMBU, with support from the university’s Global South Working Group, and the Norwegian Association for Development Research (NFU).

Background

Rising inequalities, geopolitical tensions, political polarization, ongoing and emerging conflicts, as well as anti-democratic and nationalistic trends, are creating significant challenges. These issues, combined with environmental and social injustices tied to unsustainable development paths and the ‘green transition,’ both within and beyond the Nordic countries and Europe, jeopardize academic and civic freedoms, human rights, and global development progress.

The need for collaborative efforts, and critical thinking on the ‘global development project’ as well as 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 (including the introduction of tuition fees for international students in Norway last year), shifting geopolitical realities, and changing development assistance priorities and approaches are undermining the ’global classroom’ and reducing opportunities for international collaboration and solidarity.

In this shifting context, there is an urgent need for strengthened Nordic cooperation and a rethinking of the roles, responsibilities, and potential for Nordic development research environments to foster and support inclusive and just transitions to sustainability, both at home and abroad.

Equally pressing is the role of Nordic universities in creating inclusive and safe spaces for cross-cultural dialogue, fostering academic-civic solidarity, and contributing to long-term institution building and reconstruction amidst growing geopolitical instabilities, war and protracted conflicts.

Forum for Development Studies.

Welcome to NMBU

NMBU’s international profile and mission focus on improving the well-being of the planet. Through high-quality research and degree programmes, the university equips 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!

Updated 10 September: Full draft program with all sessions
  • 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

Sponsors / Supporters

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