The Collaboratory

The complexity and interconnectedness of today’s social, economic and environmental challenges call for radical innovation in research, higher education, and governance. In all three areas, there is a need for new types of knowledge, tools, and experience that makes it possible to make sense of and act in a world undergoing rapid transformation. Meeting these challenges, the Collaboratory’s ambition is to bring students, researchers, and practitioners together in innovative, interdisciplinary and problem-oriented forms of education, research and outreach activities. Through this approach to higher education, a broad international network and, not the least, the solid grounding in and contribution to existing activities at the University of Bergen, the Collaboratory is a central part of the UiB strategy for 2016 – 2020.

Through experimentation and R&D-based innovation in student involvement and teaching methods, the Collaboratory aims to put its ambitions into practice by initiating workshops, courses, research projects, journals, and conferences – all with students in the driver’s seat.

The first formalization of the Collaboratory’s vision was Bergen International Student Conference 2018 – an academic conference by and for university students. In October 2017 two UiB students were hired part-time as conference coordinators, and together with a reference group from CET and a team of highly committed student volunteers, they dedicated themselves for six months to bring about a two-day conference in early April 2018 on the theme “Climate and Society: Transformations in the 21^st Century”. With almost one hundred speakers and participants from all over the world, BISC was a huge success, and it was immediately followed by the decision for this to be an annual event.

BISC 2019, and other projects such as workshops and student-led credit courses, are currently in the development phase, so stay tuned for more information later this fall.

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