This editorial is translated by UiOGPT
There are numerous centers within the Faculty of Social Sciences. These are organized and funded in various ways. Some have a disciplinary focus in a single field. Others are interdisciplinary. For instance, the Norwegian Fiscal Studies conducts socio-economic research on tax economics and is located under the Department of Economics. The Center for Research on Extremism, C-REX, is an interdisciplinary center that studies right-wing extremism. Organizationally, this center is under the Department of Political Science. The Department of Psychology has two centers, the Center of Lifespan Changes in Brain and Cognition (LCBC) and PROMENTA, which are organized as level 4 units at PSI, on par with PSI's four professional sections. PSI is also a partner in a Center of Excellence (SFF) called RITMO, which is an interdisciplinary collaboration between musicology, computer science, and psychology. The center is organizationally tied to the Department of Musicology but located at PSI. Two of the faculty's centers, TIK and ARENA, are organized as basic units at the faculty level, on par with the departments. While TIK has both research and teaching responsibilities, ARENA is solely a research center.
Centers are also found at other faculties. For example, the homepage of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences lists no less than 17 centers. Both the internal operations of these and their organization vary greatly.
If we look beyond the faculty level to the University of Oslo (UiO) itself, we see that three of UiO's centers, namely LINK, the Centre for Interdisciplinary Gender Research, and the Centre for Development and the Environment, fall directly under the University Board. At its meeting on May 13 this year, the University Board discussed the establishment of a new unit which, according to the agenda papers, is to serve as "the hub and focal point of the University of Oslo’s research, education, and dissemination on a global sustainable and fair future." The university management proposes that this unit should be called the Center for Global Sustainability. Precisely what organizational unit this new center should be and where it should be placed within UiO's organization is not yet clarified.
Although there is many centers at UiO, there is no unified understanding at UiO of what characterizes a center, when it is appropriate to establish or close down a center, what tasks a center should solve, what kind of positions a center should have, how centers should be financed, and how centers should relate to the rest of UiO's activities. UiO has an established policy for SFF’s, but not for other centers, even though parts of the SFF policy may have implications for other centers.
What kind of center policy should we have at the Faculty of Social Sciences? The Faculty Board wishes to investigate this question, and since the University of Oslo (UiO) has no established center policy, there are few guidelines from UiO central administration. The Faculty Board has requested a drafted mandate for the investigation at the next board meeting and has asked for the actual report to be presented to the board at the meeting in March 2025. The board's requirement came in connection with the board's review of ARENA's request to announce a permanent research position, but the requirement is formulated in broad and general terms. The drafted mandate has been presented to the department heads and the employees' organizations, but the mandate will also be discussed with the faculty's heads of offica and again with both the department heads and the employees' organizations. In other words, there will be ample opportunity to provide input on the mandate before it is scheduled to be adopted by the Faculty Board on June 13.
The faculty will set up a working group with the necessary expertise to investigate the question of center policy at the faculty. We plan to have input meetings this autumn and hope to be able to discuss a draft with the Faculty Board in December. Also, prior to this meeting, the draft will be discussed with the department heads, office managers, and the employees' organizations.
Investigating the faculty's center policy is an important task. Center policy has academic strategic, personnel, economic, legal, and other aspects that are useful to have described and assessed. Hopefully, the investigation will clarify important aspects of center organization and make us even more aware of the connection between how we organize ourselves internally and how we take care of our core tasks.