NordForsk is a platform for joint Nordic research and research infrastructure cooperation. The organisation was established by the Nordic Council of Ministers, and is governed by a board with full responsibility for
NordForsk´s activities. The board is composed of high-level members from research councils and universities in the five Nordic countries. We spoke with NordForsk’s director Professor Gunnel Gustafsson about why she
believes this collaborative regional approach to research is delivering such success and what she sees as society’s big challenges that lie ahead
N
ordForsk was formed by the Nordic Council of Ministers in 2005 with the specific aim of strengthening research in the Nordic region through joint funding initiatives and close
cooperation. The Nordic Council of Ministers itself is a collaboration between Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland on the political level, so NordForsk simply extends this cooperation ideal to a more practical level. Modeled on the European Research Area, the idea behind NordForsk’s creation was to cultivate a Nordic research and innovation area involving the different national research organisations and funding bodies in each of the five countries working closely together. The working structure is relatively simple. Nordforsk
remains formally under the control of the Nordic Council of Ministers and they provide the organisation with its basic funding and statutes, offering a relatively open mandate in terms of its research focus. But NordForsk is expected to work closely with the individual Nordic funding agencies and these organisations contribute most of the research funding and so directly input into the thematic focus of research being undertaken – on the simple proviso that if they feel the research efforts will clearly benefit from Nordic cooperation and the sharing of collected competencies in the region, then they will provide funding. It’s a simple idea of pooling resources and with
customary Nordic efficiency and typical modesty it is doing rather well as it celebrates its tenth anniversary. Professor Gunnel Gustafsson is NordForsk’s current director and she believes that NordForsk’s success is at least in part due to the cooperation between the national funding agencies in developing relevant and valuable research strategies. “The way it really works is that the five research
funding agencies are represented at a high level on the NordForsk’s board,” she explains. “So they are also part of the strategic policy making of the organisation. “We talk to and listen to funding agencies and
universities as well as to ministries in order to understand what
their priorities are,” she continues.
“We work together to clearly establish where it makes sense to cooperate and in which areas cooperation amongst the Nordic countries will benefit the research.” There is clearly a perception that this approach works
well as all countries continue to fund NordForsk and give NordForsk a suitably blank canvas to invest that
www.projectsmagazine.eu.com Professor Gunnel Gustafsson
money into research. But Professor Gustafsson believes there is added value to this joint funding. “There is more to it than just providing the funds,” she says. “We live in a knowledge society and in our strategy, not only do we focus on developing research infrastructure, which of course is very important, but we also focus on addressing the great challenges of our time, and in the case of our region that means filling the gap in knowledge that may exist in individual countries and increasing the knowledge that is available by tackling them together, when complementary competencies clearly exist.” Obviously the tangible impact NordForsk has
directly on society is much harder to measure but there are several good examples of success stories. The organisation has, for example, recently evaluated its first two thematic centres of excellence – one being the transition of the Nordic welfare states, the other being food, nutrition and health. It has been clearly demonstrated in these evaluations that working together has increased the impact of the work undertaken. “The most obvious impact here is
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