Norway

Project Team Oslo, Norway 

The project CERES 21 – Creative Responses to Sustainability – is a joint venture of the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo and the Institute for Innovation and Economic Organisation at the Norwegian School of Management.

 

The project is directed by Nina Witoszek who is research professor at the Centre for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo. Before joining Oslo University she worked at the Universities of Oxford, the National University of Ireland in Galway, and the European University in Florence. She held visiting professorships at the University of Cambridge and the University of Stanford and, since 2008, has been affiliated with the Centre for Advanced Studies at the Royal Norwegian Academy of Science.

The project is co-directed by Atle Midttun who is professor at the Norwegian School of Management, Institute of Innovation and Economic Organisation, Director of The Centre for Corporate Citizenship, and Co-Director of The Centre for Energy and Environment. Before joining the Norwegian School of Management, he worked at the Group for Resource Studies under the National Research Council, at the Institute for Social studies, Oslo and the Institute of Sociology, University of Oslo. He was a visiting professor at the Université Paris Sud, the University of Michigan, and a visiting Scholar at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Max Planck Institute for Social Research.

Elin Staurem is research assistant at BI Norwegian School of Management, the Institute of Innovation and Economic Organisation and administrative manager at the Centre for Corporate Responsibility. She has a MSc in Industrial Ecology and a BA in European Studies and Foreign Languages, both from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim.

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The Centre for Development and the Environment, University of Oslo

SUM is an international research institution at the University of Oslo which promotes scholarly work on the challenges and dilemmas posed by sustainable future. The Center was established in 1990 in response to the report of the Brundtland Commission: Our Common Future.  SUM is currently one of the few institutions in Norway advancing synergic, interdisciplinary research of development and the environment and combining insights from the social, humanist and natural sciences.  SUM is also an academic home of the founder of Deep Ecology, professor Arne Næss, and the coordinating unit for the network for Norwegian Latin American Research.

SUM’s current research is organized in five broad areas: 1) Consumption, Energy and Social Change; 2) Culture, Ethics and Sustainability; 3) Global and Regional Governance for Sustainable Development; 4) Poverty and Development;  5) ProSus – Programme for Research and Documentation for a Sustainable Society. In addition, SUM highlights research in selected thematic areas such as Natural Resource Management and Business and Governance.

Although SUM is primarily a research institution, it offers courses at Bachelor, MA and PhD levels, as well as International Master in Cultural Approaches to Sustainability.  The Center has the status of the Research School which specializes in educating scholars interested in interdisciplinary perspectives on development and the environment.  

SUM is presently a coordinating center of several prestigious international projects  - financed by  the Norwegian- and the European Research Councils, The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and NORAD – and featuring, among others, Creative Revisioning of Sustainability  in the context of climate shift (CERES 21),  Poverty and Legal Empowerment , Land Use Policies and Sustainable Development in Developing Countries (LUPIS),  and  Explaining Different Immunization Coverage in developing countries.

The University of Oslo is Norway’s largest and oldest institution of higher education. It was founded in 1811 when Norway was still under Danish rule. Today the University of Oslo has approximately 30,000 students and 4,600 employees, and, in spite of its short history, it boasts four Nobel Prize winners: Ragnar Frisch (economics, 1969),  Odd Hassel (chemistry, 1969), Ivar Giæver (physics ,1973) , and Trygve Haavelmo (economics, 1989). 

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The Institute for Innovation and Economic Organisation, at the Norwegian School of Management in Oslo

The Institute of Innovation and Economic Organisation conducts research and education in fundamental topics related to innovation, business development, management of global companies, business history and economic organisation. The Institute hosts 7 professors, 20 researchers and 6 phd candidates, and comprises 4 research centres, two of which are engaged in the CERES project:

 1) The Centre for Corporate Responsibility, headed by professor Atle Midttun, which studies and promotes sustainable and responsible business. The Centre supplies and builds competence among students and business leaders, for dealing with corporate challenges in relation to economic, ethical, social and ecological sustainability.

2) The Centre for Energy and Environment - headed by professors Atle Midttun, Øystein Noreng and Bjarne Ytterhus - which conducts research and educational programmes within the fields of energy and the environment.

The Institute of Innovation and Economic Organisation - one of nine research institutes at BI Norwegian School of Management -  is a self owned foundation with 18 253 students, whose purpose is to conduct education and research at a high international level within management, administration, economics, marketing, innovation and entrepreneurship. Founded in 1943 as a private cooperation offering evening business classes, BI Norwegian School of Management has grown to be one of the leading and most influential education and research institutions in Norway. The school has agreements with 148 universities and business schools in 40 countries all over the world. This includes an MBA program in China in cooperation with Fudan University School of Management, and a strategic collaboration with Nanyang University of Technology in Singapore, ESCP/EAP European School of Management in Paris and University of California- Berkley.

Centre for Development and The Environment

Institute of Innovation and Economic Organisation