SVT application in the final to become Norwegian Centre of Excellence
Out of 161 applications, SVT’s Centre of Actionable Knowledges (AcKnowledges) was one of 36 initiatives nationwide that made it to round two of the call.
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The news was announced by the Research Council of Norway (RCN) on 11 June. The primary objective of RCN's Norwegian Centres of Excellence Scheme (SFF) is to fund centres that will conduct targeted, focused and long-term research of high international calibre.
The call is two-stage, and the deadline for the first stage of the call was 18 November 2020. AcKnowledges is one of seven out of 25 applications from the University of Bergen that made it to round two. Three of the SFF finalists from UiB belong to the Faculty of Humanities, which got all of their SFF applications to round two this time around.
Important recognition
Professor at SVT, Jeroen van der Sluijs, leads the work on AcKnowledges, and he is very happy that their hard work ahead of round 1 has yielded results.
"We are delighted that broad multidisciplinary expert committee has selected our proposal. This is an important recognition of our diagnosis that a reform in evidence-based decision making is urgently needed."
Could contribute to a major change
Van der Sluijs leads a team consisting of researchers at both SVT, UiB’s Faculties of Social Sciences and Medicine, and several international institutions who will be part of the proposed centre. He is no newcomer to these types of applications: In 2016, his then application Centre of Responsible Evidence Appraisal also made it to round two of the SFF call.
If his application this time results in AcKnowledges being one of around 11 funded centres, van der Sluijs thinks that centre will contribute to a major change in the social organization of expertise to better accommodate and utilize fruitful diversity inside and outside the scientific community.
"Our approach will enable including a greater diversity of perspectives and knowledge forms in the co-creation of actionable knowledge."
Uniquely positioned team
The professor thinks that his team is uniquely positioned with the double-competence of working at the interface of knowledge and action and long-standing experience in researching that same interface.
"This rare combination will support the envisaged reform of the social organization of expertise that our Centre aims to achieve, based on acknowledging the need for accommodating a plurality of perspectives, extended dialogues and co-creation."
Around 11 centres will be funded, and these will be announced in June 2022. The deadline for applications in round two is 15 September, and van der Sluijs and his team are now ready to work through the summer with the next part of the application.
