The UTFORSK project financed seven PhD students and one staff member from UKZN as active participants at The Bergen Summer Research School 2017 . One of the PhD courses (“Agenda 2030: Poverty, Climate and Sustainability”) was jointly organised by the Geophysics Institute (Bjerknes Centre for Climate Change) and the ISSC’s Comparative Research Programme of Poverty (CROP Secretariat), both at the University of Bergen. Professor Oliver Mtapuri held four lectures as part of the joint CROP-UiB-UKZN course and was involved in a workshop with CROP Director Alberto Cimadamore to discuss research ideas and design with students. The CROP-UiB-UKZN course was one of six official PhD courses offered by the BSRS 2017.
The Partnership for Poverty and Sustainable Development Studies played a central role in the implementation of this course, in terms of CROP’s contribution to curriculum development, teaching provided by Oliver Mtapuri (UKZN) and the participation of seven UKZN students in the course itself.
Five research papers were submitted by UKZN students who participated in the course. All five papers were reviewed and graded by lecturers.
The opportunity for UKZN students and staff to participate in the Bergen Summer Research School provided student mobility within the project as well as contact with other students and international scholars. It also enabled staff members from UiB and UKZN to work together to develop the course content for the PhD course on “Agenda 2030: Poverty, Climate and Sustainability”. In this context, the course leaders were successful in facilitating the participation of keynote speaker, Professor William Clark from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Professor Clark is a renowned scholar in the field of development and sustainability science (see http://www.uib.no/en/rs/bsrs/105339/sustainability-science-state-field). He gave a special lecture on “Crafting usable knowledge for sustainable development” as part of the UiB-UKZN course at BSRS 2017.
© Colourbox