The University of Bergen and the International Science Council signs new deal to establish GRIP

On the 15th of October 2019, Rector Dag Rune Olsen at UiB and Sir Peter Gluckman from the International Science Council signed an agreement to establish the Global Research Programme on Inequality (GRIP).

On the 15th of October 2019, Rector Dag Rune Olsen at UiB and Sir Peter Gluckman from the International Science Council signed an agreement to establish the Global Research Programme on Inequality (GRIP).

“Today we are turning a new page and UiB is extremely pleased to be signing an agreement for a new programme with the ISC. UiB has for several years recognised and worked with the SDGs and Agenda 2030. With its focus on inequality—also a key part of UiB’s strategic area global challenges—GRIP will deepen this work by working truly globally”, says UiB Rector Dag Rune Olsen. 

The program is established as an interdisciplinary research programme that takes as its point of departure that inequality is both a fundamental challenge to human well-being and is an impediment to the achievement of the ambitions of Agenda 2030.

Since 1992, UiB has collaborated with what is now ISC to tackle poverty in the form of an earlier programme called Comparative Research Programme on Poverty. This work focused on working collaboratively with knowledge networks, institutions and scholars to promote research and policy exchange related to poverty. 

“A key challenge for contemporary science is finding and identifying pathways to global sustainability that can reduce inequality and lift people out of poverty. Some of the significant gains that have been made in reducing poverty are now being threatened by pressing global challenges such as climate change, biodiversity loss and conflict. The GRIP programme, by providing a vibrant and interactive network of social scientists that collaborate on these issues, can build the critical knowledge required to identify and develop these pathways”, says Mathieu Denis, Science Director at ISC.

 “GRIP will not only be doing research on the global south but work with and in those areas in a search to re-connect various epistemic traditions from across the globe. In order to do research on inequality and in order to produce actionable results, such a global approach is indispensable”, says Olsen.                
                        
 GRIP is jointly hosted by UiB and ISC who will both define the programme mandates and a general framework for its activities. UiB will host the program secretariat and provide its main source of funding.