Former CAS scholars receive generous funding

The Corona pandemic, the climate crisis and the green transition illuminate how important ground-breaking research is for society, said the Minister of Higher Education, Henrik Asheim, in a press release on December 16.

Several former CAS scholars recently learned that they will receive grants from the Research Council of Norway (RCN), announced just before the Christmas holidays.

Grateful for the network-building at CAS

University of Oslo Associate Professor of Archaeology Þóra Pétursdóttir will receive a grant of NOK 12 million for her project Relics of Nature, An Archaeology of Natural Heritage in the High North. In 2016/17, Pétursdóttir participated as a postdoctoral fellow in the CAS project After Discourse: Things, Archaeology, and Heritage in the 21st Century, led by Professor of Archaeology  at UiT The Arctic University of Norway Bjørnar Julius Olsen.

• Read also: Alumni Spotlight: Bjørnar Julius Olsen

She says that her time at CAS has meant a lot for her further career. Pétursdóttir, who is from Iceland, says that one of the most obvious favourable outcomes is that the close collaboration with other researchers led to several publications during and after the CAS year.

‘Even more important for me personally was the network that I built through the research environment—a network that has contributed to me landing this new research project. For that I am extremely grateful.’

Former CAS fellows succeed in RCN

Here are some of the projects that will be led by former CAS scholars:

• Øystein Linnebo, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Oslo, will be leading the project Infinity and Intentionality: Towards a New Synthesis.

Linnebo was a fellow in the 2015/16 CAS project led by Professors of Philosophy Camilla Serck-Hanssen and Frode Kjosavik, Disclosing the Fabric of Reality-The Possibility of Metaphysics in the Age of Science. Serck-Hanssen is now the Director of CAS.

• Biology Professor at the Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU), Leif Egil Loe, will receive funding for his project Understanding Climate Change Impacts in an Arctic Ecosystem: An Integrated Approach through the Prism of Svalbard Reindeer.

Loe participated in Atle Mysterud and Jon Swenson’s CAS project Climate effects on harvested large mammal populations. NMBU writes that this project is an extension of an existing RCN-funded project, which a couple of years ago found out that the more challenging winter climate due to climate change makes the Svalbard reindeer lose weight.

• One of last year’s project leaders, Professor of Cultural History at the University of Oslo, John Ødemark, will receive funding for his project Bodies in Translation: Science, Knowledge and Sustainability in Cultural Translation.

Ødemark led the CAS project The Body in Translation: Historicising and Reinventing Medical Humanities and Knowledge Translation together with Eivind Engebretsen.

• Professor of Biology at the Centre for Ecological and Evolutionary Synthesis (CEES) Atle Mysterud receives funding for no less than two projects: Timing of Host-Vector-Pathogen Activity and Emergence of Lyme Disease under Climate Change, and Damage and beyond: role of farmland for red deer populations.

• Read also: Alumni Spotlight: Atle Mysterud