PhD for Innovation at Bergen Summer Research School 2021
At the 2021 Bergen Summer Research School, we facilitated the joint sessions on “Systems thinking and creative interdisciplinary problem-solving and project management” with participants from all six summer school courses (more than 120 in total).
The theme of the 2021 Bergen Summer Research School was “Science and Society towards the Sustainable Development Goals”. During our interdisciplinary sessions, we collaborated with SDG Bergen Science Advice. We specifically focused on the SDG Bergen Policy Brief series that was officially launched on the first day of our sessions.
The task for our participants was to develop their own policy brief about a Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) nexus, that is, on the interlinkages between a subset of SDGs and how positive interactions between SDGs can be optimized and negative interactions be minimized. Specifically, participants were asked to:
- select a relevant SDG nexus
- select specific sub-goals / targets / indicators and give policy recommendations directly on these, based on their own and/ or others’ research
- think local experience – global relevance when preparing the policy brief. This is particularly important for making the policy brief relevant to policy makers.
The entire summer school was held online, and so were our interactive sessions. For the hands-on experience with systems mapping, this meant, for example, that we had to recruit 8 facilitators who conducted online mapping sessions with some 15 participants each. The facilitation manual for these sessions can be accessed here. Here are some sample maps that were created during these sessions.
Time was, as always, short and the task challenging. However, our wonderful participants rose to the occasion and delivered a total of 17 Bergen Summer Research School policy briefs. They all enter a competition during which up to three policy briefs will be turned into SDG Bergen Policy Briefs.
- We Need to Discuss Degrowth
- Educating the Public on Sustainable Fish Consumption
- Community Access to Renewable Energy
- Leveling the Playing Field for Women in STEM
- Climate Displacement Education
- Marine Plastic Pollution
- Women in Small-Scale Fisheries
- Sustainability vs Starvation
- Deep Sea Mining
- Sustainable Fisheries
- Equal Access to Quality Education
- Fishers’ Climate Knowledge
- Water Scarcity and Gender
- Transport Systems for Gender Equality
- Poverty and Equality during the Pandemic
- Food and Nutrition Education
- Subsidies and Fishing
2021: the three best policy briefs from Bergen Summer Research School 2021
- Transdisciplinary partnerships are needed to obtain sustainable fisheries across the globe
- Regulating Deep Sea Mining for Sustainable Development
- Sustaining the invisible contributions of women in small-scale fisheries
PhD for Innovation fall 2021
Between September 13 and 17, 2021, we ran PhD for Innovation in hybrid form. Course participants were working on the SDG Wizzard initiative and had to develop training material to help build SDG literacy with companies/businesses and to make progress towards SDG reporting in a rigorous and standardized way.
Innovasjon for Renovasjon og Gjenvinning fall 2021
This is a modified version of the PhD for Innovation course with a specific focus on industry partners. It will run for the first time in the fall 2021.