Reidunn Ljones, senior librarian, and Kjersti Berg, communication advisor, are very happy to welcome their audience to the upgraded venue.
15 Jan 2019

Bergen Global: Making sense of global challenges

Bergen Resource Centre for International Development has changed its name to Bergen Global. But the main goal is the same: To be an international hub on global development challenges.  

CMI and the University of Bergen (UiB) have a long-standing cooperation on global development challenges. The partners recently signed a new long-term partnership agreement. One of the arenas for this cooperation is the former Bergen Resource Centre for International Development, now Bergen Global. For ten years, the venue in Jekteviksbakken 31 has welcomed its audience to debates and lectures on development, politics, and current world affairs. Academics, politicians, civil society members and the public have come together to enlighten and to be enlightened.

Expanding the network
The name change reflects even higher ambitions for the future: A bigger and more closely knitted network with researchers at CMI and UiB, and extended contact with the Bergen hub for development research at large, even more seminars and debates of public interest, and reaching out to an even wider audience.

Bergen Global is already cooperating closely with researchers from CMI and UiB projects and centres like Breaking BAD on the backlash of democracy, IMER on migration and the Centre on Law and Social Transformation.

-Now is a good time to widen our perspective and extend an open invitation to more researchers and research groups, and to other institutions and organisations in Bergen. Our ambition is to make Bergen Global a national and international centre for dialogue, discussions and knowledge on global challenges. Bergen Global is the place to go both to get knowledge and to share knowledge that make sense of global challenges, says Kjersti Berg, communication advisor at Bergen Global.

Global challenges are at the very core of CMI’s research agenda, and is one of three strategic areas at UiB. This gives Bergen Global, which is co-owned by the to institutions, a key role in placing global challenges on the public agenda.

Events, streaming, podcasts and books
The new Bergen Global is not only a more inviting venue, they have invested in top notch technical equipment for streaming and podcasts. With podcasts and streaming they aim to reach an even bigger audience.

-We invite some of the most competent and knowledgeable academics and civil society actors to our events, and there is so much to learn from listening in or watching. So many interesting conversations and debates take place here, and we want to share them with our audience, both the ones who have the opportunity to show up in person and the ones who cannot be here. The new upgrades and investments will enable us to build an archive of knowledge that can be accessed by everyone whenever they want to. Podcasts and video recordings from this archive may even be used as documentation of research communication by researchers, or in teaching, says Berg.

Podcasts and video recordings from the events will be made easily available on the Bergen Global website.

Bergen Global hosts more than 100 events a year, the longest running series being their Breakfast Forum where experts from academia and civil society are invited to discuss current affairs in an informal setting.

Informal or formal, big or small: Bergen Global sees the value of and put their efforts into every event.

-We have worked hard to make sure that both panelists, lecturers and the audience get quality experiences here at Bergen Global, says Berg.

Visitors can also make use of the library services. Bergen Global’s library is a specialized development research library in Norway and boasts more than 70 000 volumes on Africa, Asia, Latin-America and the Middle East.

Senior librarian Reidunn Ljones is proud to have books on from all corners of the world in the new display, framing the refurbished venue.

 

For updates on events at Bergen Global, you can sign up for their newsletter and/or follow Bergen Global in social media: globalbergen on Instagram and Facebook.