Highlights from 2024
NordForsk's primary activity is funding and facilitating Nordic research co-operation. In March, we set a new record when the Nordic countries joined forces with Canada and the USA to announce funding for research on the sustainable management of the Arctic. funding for research on the sustainable management of the Arctic. This was the first time we collaborated with research councils from as many as ten countries and regions across the Arctic to issue a call. This is a two-stage call, and the final decisions are expected in March 2025.
Another major research initiative is linked to the Nordic Council of Ministers’ ambition that the Nordics shall be the most sustainable region in the world, and in June we announced funding for ten research projects on the green transition. As a contribution to achieving the goal of a socially sustainable Nordic region, we have awarded funding to seven projects in migration and integration research. Both of these initiatives are based on co-operation between countries in the Nordic and Baltic region – a co-operation that stakeholders across the region consider to be of great value.
Researcher networks are important tools in Nordic research co-operation. During the year, we issued calls for proposals and awarded funding to networks that aim to strengthen indigenous perspectives in research, and to research networks to strengthen preparedness and resilience in the Nordic region. As part of our efforts to strengthen the opportunities for Nordic researchers in the EU, we awarded funding to Nordic research networks that will apply for EU calls in the field of antimicrobial resistance.
It is important that we communicate insights from the research we fund. In the area of Nordic co-operation, we have published a report on Nordic added value with recommendations for strengthening Nordic co-operation, as well as a report with recommendations on how the Nordic countries should work together on research infrastructure. In our series of researcher interviews, we have also learned that Scandinavian organisations were the forerunners of today's Nordic co-operation.
Much of the research we fund is of great benefit to society. For example, we have learnt that Nordic researchers are developing new salmon feed that can solve headaches for the aquaculture industry. We have also disseminated lessons learnt from the pandemic, such as the fact that Scandinavia helped push poor countries to the back of the vaccine queue, and that political top-down management trumped Nordic crisis management principles. In the field of migration, we have learnt that young refugees build their new lives with endurance, talent, and hard work, and that the flow of refugees from Ukraine are causing the open Nordic arms to close, and that the integration of young Ukrainian refugees requires a completely new strategy.
At NordForsk, we place great emphasis on documenting research impact. We started the year by launching the new NordForsk impact dashboard tool, which provides detailed and interactive data from our research projects. We also investigated how the public Nordic research councils work with impact, and we concluded that there is considerable potential for closer Nordic co-operation on impact. As a follow-up to this, we have initiated a Nordic impact network, where we exchange ideas and experiences. Several of our funded activities have done a lot in this area, and the QUINT research centre has distinguished itself with impactful research on teaching quality. Of course, this year we also submitted our own impact report for 2024, which aims to demonstrate why Nordic research co-operation is and will continue to be important.