Helge Sandøy (UiB)

Experiences from Nordic research collaboration in language and linguistics

On network meetings:
“A very interesting experience was that our meetings often followed the same pattern of group dynamics: During the afternoon the problems seemed to become more and more complicated as all possible objections were raised, and the participants often became frustrated. After such critical stages, we often felt pessimistic about the chances of designing a common basis for the subproject. However, in the morning new and fruitful ideas could be presented, and, of course, the mood was totally different. This oscillation from crisis to optimism is in my experience very fruitful when working on a problem, because of the intensive discussions and the participants’ great involvement.”

On deadlines:
“The best deadlines are in fact the network meetings. An announced presentation at a meeting cannot be cancelled. Or more accurately: It is very difficult to escape these deadlines.”

On finances:
“The very complex financial situation is a severe drawback for the work. On the one side, the situation generates more administrative work, and, more importantly, it makes the research work itself less efficient. It is inefficient to let many academics carry out relatively small projects on the basis of their private enthusiasms. With our aims [...] it would have been more economical for the research community or research funds to spend more money in a lump for a project carried out by fewer people on a full-time basis [...].”

On researcher training:
“A problem we did not foresee was the need for courses for specific purposes. In some subprojects it is necessary to do statistical work, and too late we realised that very few of our members were competent to do this at an advanced level. We should therefore have planned an intensive course for smaller groups both in statistics and phonology at an early stage.”

On Nordic collaboration in the humanities politically:
“There are quite a lot of Nordic organisations and institutions, and there are several funds. However, few of the funds target research within the humanities, and the funds are too small for projects involving full-time scholars. Politically it is therefore very important to establish a tradition for Nordic research and for submitting large-scale applications to the various funds, because this may have an impact on the future organisation of the research policy. Nordic politicians do observe what is going on and note which projects are successful when they propose new research funds and pass budgets. It is therefore of great importance to our research community within humanities to establish and intensify our tradition of collaborative Nordic projects.”