News
20.02.24 Kerstin Reibold wins the Charles Mills award!
Congratulations to Kerstin Reibold for being awarded the Journal of Applied Philosophy Charles Mills award for her article Settler Colonialism, Decolonization, and Climate Change. A short news-story on the prize (in Norwegian), can also be found here.
18.-19.12.23 Workshop in Cambridge: ‘Making Home: Migration, Culture, and Integration’
‘Making Home: Migration, Culture, and Integration’ workshop was held at the wonderful surroundings of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge 18.-19.12.2023. Participants enjoyed two days of interesting discussions, academic lectures, arts performances, a visit to the Black Atlantic exhibition at the Fitzwilliam Museum, as well as a two-hour Movement workshop aiming to discuss issues of ‘home’, ‘safety’, and ‘grief’ with the help of body movement and contact with both one’s inner self and other participants. In the photo, some of the participants gathered for drinks at the Old Combination Room (OCR), Corpus Christi College.
GOODINT post doc Zsolt Kapelner starts part time in a new position in Oslo
GOODINT congratulates project post doc Zsolt Kapelner for his new position in GOODATTENTION project at the University of Oslo. As the two positions run parallel with one another, Kapelner will be working 50% for GOODINT from 1st of August 2023 onwards, and divide his time between the two hosting institutions UiT and UiO until November 2024. At UiO Kapelner will work on the norms of attention in a democracy, for example, how public attention to various social issues, including immigration, can affect the quality of democracy.
Trust, Social Cohesion, and Integration Conference
The GOODINT main project conference will be on Trust, Social Cohesion, and Integration and will take place at Memorial University Newfoundland from June, 21-13, 2023.
While both ‘trust’ and ‘integration’ have garnered a lot of social-scientific attention, there is a gap in research when it comes to the interconnections between the two. This fact is even more puzzling as researchers of both phenomena rely on a number of common concepts, as well as a number of shared norms. The conference aims to close this gap by exploring how these phenomena are connected. Specifically, what is of interest are empirical insights into the preconditions of social and institutional trust, as wells as normative theories about the aims of integration and fair distribution of the benefits and burdens associated with trust and official, state-led, trust-building efforts. The workshop will explore how these findings bear on how we understand ‘good integration’ and how it can be achieved. This is especially pressing in societies characterized by cultural diversity and/or historical injustice between groups.
You can find the program below and more information and abstracts here: https://adadashli.wixsite.com/my-site/post/memorial-university
The conference is organized by Dimitrios Panagos (Memorial University Newfoundland), Kerstin Reibold (University of Tromsø), Mira Bachvarova (University of New Brunswick), Patti Lenard (University of Ottawa) and received funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada, the Norwegian Research Council GOODINT project (NFR 313846), and the University of New Brunswick.
Progrem here.
12.01.23 Kerstin Reibold receives the Teaching Prize 2022 of the State of Brandenburg, Germany
Kerstin Reibold has received the Teaching Prize 2022 of the State of Brandenburg, Germany. The prize recognizes the commitment of teachers whose teaching concept aims in a special way to impart basic knowledge, skills and attitudes. Special attention is paid to the achievement of the set learning objectives through the use of the chosen teaching method chosen as well as the competence-oriented examination procedure used. This year’s prize had a special focus on promoting social cooperation and collaboration and the consolidation of teaching, learning and examination content.
Reibold received the teaching prize for a seminar on refugee rights. The seminar was designed so as to introduce students to inquiry-based learning and student-initiated research, supported by mentoring and collaboration with other students, the seminar convenor, and external experts from academia and NGOs. In synchronous and asynchronous stages students experienced an entire research process – from finding a research question and a first literature review to formulating and presenting an own argument and revising it after feedback. The seminar concluded with a two day graduate conference at which students presented the results of their research. By working towards this shared goal and through repeated rounds of group feedback and exchange, students learned not just how to organize their own small research project but also how trusting cooperation with others is essential even for individual scientific projects.
10.10.22 Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters annual Nansen lecture by prof. Andreas Føllesdal and prof. Maja Janmyr
GoodInt member, prof. Andreas Føllesdal will, together with prof. Maja Janmyr (UiO), give the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters annual Nansen lecture at the Frammuseum in Oslo 10th Oct 2022. The lecture draws from the backdrop of Fridtjof Nansen’s work for refugees 100 years ago, and addresses many of the contemporary questions relating to the ethics of forced displacement and the duties of different actors towards refugees. For more information on this year’s Nansen lecture (in Norwegian): https://dnva.no/detskjer/2022/06/om-nansenpasset-og-flyktningsituasjonen-i-europa-da-og-na
29.09-30.09 Twin Workshops at Aarhus
We enjoyed three days of frutiful discussions on topic of migration, discrimination and integration during the twin workshops at Aarhus: Migration and Discrimination: A Normative Exploration WS, and Goodint Project WS.
On the picture below some of the participants of the workshops.
28-29.09.22 Migration and Discrimination: A Normative Exploration Workshop
26.08.22. Sara Toffanin wins Åse Hiorth Lerviks's prize!
16.08.22 Welcome to new postdoc Kerstin Reibold
We would like to welcome GOODINT's second postdoctoral researcher Kerstin Reibold. Reibold received her PhD from UiT Tromsø in 2020 on Indigenous rights, supersession, and moral status equality and, after a two year post-doctoral position at Potsdam, will be rejoining UiT and the GOODINT project for another three years. In her post-doctoral project, Reibold will analyze trust as a factor that determines important aspects of integration such as equality of opportunity, chances for cooperation, and the social cohesion of multicultural groups and societies. She is interested in whether cultural integration is central for building trust between immigrants and native populations and what obstacles might remain despite cultural integration and what possible alternatives for building trust are. More broadly, she thinks about how good intergroup relations can be (re-) established in different contexts such as immigration, reconciliation after injustices, and amidst resource conflicts.
Welcome to GoodInt, and welcome back to the PDJ research group!
26.04.22 Welcome to new postdoc Zolt Kapelner
Zsolt Kapelner received a PhD in philosophy from Central European University (Vienna, Austria), where he worked on the problem of the value of democracy. In his research at UiT, he connects his interests in democratic theory and the philosophy of immigration in a research project that focuses on the role of democratic inclusion in good integration and how these connect with the problems of social cohesion. In addition to democratic theory and immigration, he also published on topics, such as structural injustice and the philosophy of political resistance.
Welcome to Goodint, as well as to the PDJ research group!
20.01.22 Nils Holtug’s New Book
Goodint member Nils Holtug wrote a book titled “The Politics of Social Cohesion. Immigration, Community, and Justice” (OUP 2021). The book is a comprehensive investigation of the impact of immigration on social cohesion and equality, and of the normative basis on which we should assess this impact. Please follow the link to learn more.
19.01.22 Welcome to new PhD student Sara Toffanin
We would like to welcome our new PhD student Sara Toffanin. Her PhD project focuses on spatial dimension of asylum seekers’ integration. Despite asylum seekers are not yet members of the society, so they may not be considered as the ‘usual’ or ‘typical’ subject of integration processes, as it appears in the existing literature, yet they are engaging with the existing social norms and institutions of country in which they submitted their claim of asylum. These relations are built within a specific space, the asylum accommodation, and understanding what these spaces do provide or do not provide asylum seekers with, may have implications for our understanding of integration.
Welcome to Goodint, as well as to the PDJ research group!
18.10.21 Gina Gustavsson's new article and book
Goodint member Gina Gustavsson wrote a book on the topic of Swedish patriotism during the pandemic. It considers issues related to nationalism, such as rallying around the flag in a crisis, and wounded national pride, as well as othering and exclusion of migrants in Sweden during the Covid crisis. Please, follow the link to learn more about the book.
Gina Gustavsson has also recently published a a debate article on how it's time to stop blaming immigrants for the Swedish covid failure. Read it here.
24.09.21 GOODINT article
Follow the link to read about our research goals and hopes for the future:
Can academic philosophy make a difference?
The article is part of UiT's Researcher Corner (Forskerhjørne), where researchers at UiT can disseminate their own research in the form of short, easy-to-understand and popular science texts.
05.11.21 The Minority Status in the Nordic Region - workshop in Copenhagen
Professor Annamari Vitikainen together with assistant professor Marion Godman (Group Rights project, Aarhus) and GOODINT project is organizing a workshop on ‘The Minority Status in the Nordic Region’. It will take place on 5th November 2021 at the Royal Library (Den Sorte Diamant) in Copenhagen.
Confirmed speakers include: Renaud-Philippe Garne (Aarhus), Marion Godman (Aarhus), Nils Holtug (Copenhagen), Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen (Aarhus), Mathias Luoma (Queens), Kerstin Reibold (Potsdam), and Annamari Vitikainen (UiT).
For more information contact prof. Annamari Vitikainen.
20.08.2021 Refugees, Borders and Immigration Summit / World Pride Human Rights Forum
The Refugees, Borders and Immigration Summit will take place in the city of Malmö, Sweden. The theme of the Summit falls within the topic Borders, Decolonialization and Racism, one of the 10 topics of the Human Rights Forum.
Professor Annamari Vitikainen will be giving a talk on LGBTQ refugee prioritization in a breakout session on ‘How to improve asylum procedures, conditions, and the security along the way to integration’ on Friday, August 20, 2021 at 15.25-16.45.
Refugees, Borders and Immigration Summit is a hybrid event. The ticket for a digital participation can be purchased here.
To learn more about the event, visit their website: https://copenhagen2021.com/human-rights/refugees-borders-immigration-summit/
We are currently offering two PhD positions and one Post Doctoral position
Two PhD positions and one Postdoctoral position are available at the Department of Philosophy, Faculty of Humanties, Social Sciences and Education with the research group "Pluralism, Democracy, and Justice (PDJ)" and the project "Good Integration (GOODINT): Goals and bottlenecks of successful integration and social cohesion".
Applicants are required to submit a research proposal related to one of more of the following themes:
1.What does successful integration of migrants in European countries amount to? (The definitional question)
2.What, conceptually and empirically speaking, are the main obstacles to successful integration? (The realization question)
3.What is the moral significance of achieving it? (The normative question)
For more information, click here.