On 25 September, The African Research Universities Alliance (ARUA) and The Guild of European Research-Intensive Universities (The Guild) launched three new Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence, called CoREs.
One of these new CoREs is led by Professor Dan Banik at the University of Oslo’s Centre for Development and the Environment (SUM), together with Dr Heide Hackmann at the University of Pretoria in South Africa. The CoRE is titled The Politics of Sustainable Development: Squaring the Circle of Science and Democracy. It brings together researchers from the social sciences, humanities, natural sciences, and law to uncover the nature of the politics of sustainable development and how it affects political decisions.
“Our starting point is that the politics of sustainable development has not received sufficient attention. Sustainable development frequently, albeit erroneously, functions as an apolitical device. This alleged neutrality makes the goal of sustainable development susceptible to co-optation and manipulation, thereby allowing it to endorse a wide range of disparate political objectives. By focusing on the science-policy-practice interface, the Cluster will generate original research relevant for policymaking and public action,” says Dan Banik.
Apart from conducting cutting-edge and interdisciplinary research on governance for sustainable development, the CoRE’s PhD programme will focus on building capacity and leadership for achieving sustainable development in response to climate change-related challenges. The CORE’s team aims to train a minimum of 40 PhDs at participating African universities over 10 years. The graduates, including many from the civil service, will harness their skills and research outcomes to devise and enact climate and sustainable development policies at both national and regional levels across Africa and Europe. The Cluster’s activities will also involve the development of advanced doctoral courses for graduate students enrolled at existing programs at partner institutions and an interdisciplinary research school for PhD students.
In addition to the University of Oslo and the University of Pretoria, the CoRE comprises partners from the University of Nairobi, the University of Addis Ababa, UCLouvain, the University of Malawi and Utrecht University.
About the Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence (CoRE)
The Africa-Europe Clusters of Research Excellence (CoRE) bring together distinguished researchers from universities and research institutes across both continents, from ARUA, The Guild and beyond the two networks. Each cluster addresses a key societal challenge, framed by the Global Gateway’s AU-EU Innovation Agenda, in the context of local perspectives to ensure maximum scientific and societal impact.
The University of Oslo is a member of The Guild, which comprises twenty-one of Europe’s most distinguished research-intensive universities in sixteen European countries.
Read more about the new CoRE launch here