Rather, it is her extraordinary and unique ability to cooperate flexibly with large numbers of individuals beyond her own immediate group. As he puts it: “Intelligence and toolmaking were obviously very important as well. But if humans had not learned to cooperate flexibly in large numbers, our crafty brains and deft hands would still be splitting flint stones rather than uranium atoms.” (153–54).
If we don’t cooperate we don’t get anywhere
What Harari claims is not that brainpower and toolmaking are inconsequential, then, but that it doesn’t matter how superior our intelligence is compared to all other species—if we don’t cooperate we don’t get anywhere. Perhaps nowhere else in society is this simple fact more obvious than in academia. The myth of the lone genius sitting in an office thinking truths is just that: a myth. No thought, no idea, no article or book is an island; all is part of the main, a piece of the continent, any ostensible self-sufficiency only an illusion created by the cover of a printed artefact. Academic triumphs and innovation—the moving of knowledge frontiers—grow from interconnected networks of people within and across disciplines, and between communities of research and practice, national and international.
TF has submitted no less than eleven research project applications
TF has a long and distinguished history of such cooperation and intellectual triumphs. This year, though, has been nothing less than extraordinary. Our small faculty has, through concerted collaboration with colleagues within the faculty and beyond, nationally and internationally, and with TF’s own administration, managed to submit no less than nine research project applications; in fact, eleven, if we add those where our researchers collaborate on projects placed at faculties other than TF. And all this in the midst of a pandemic.
A key person in these complicated and extended processes has been (and continues to be) Senior Research Advisor Ingunn Gj?rva, who has steered a course safely between the Scylla and Charybdis of the various NFR regulations. Among the many scholars who have read and commented on the projects along the way, from the initial brainstorming session to panels dedicated to penultimate drafts, Hugo Lundhaug has been a constant, always and without hesitation agreeing to give input based on his extensive experience with project applications. A warm thank-you especially to Ingunn and Hugo for all the work they put into this for TF so important process.
Impressive range and depth
Of course, most of all the applicants themselves are to be congratulated and thanked for the tremendous effort they have put into their applications. The topics are seriously interesting, their range and depth decidedly impressive, and the national and international networks and collaboration the applications reveal truly encouraging. These are the projects:
- Marius Timmann Mjaaland, fellesl?ft/tverrfaglig forskningsprosjekt (Project Leader):
- “Disturbing Insights of the Anthropocene: Developing a Disturbing Interdisciplinary Ecology with Cases from Norway.”
- Helge ?rsheim, unge forskertalenter:
- “Religion Law Rising? – How Law Finds, Manages and Judges Religion.”
- Ole Jakob L?land, unge forskertalenter:
- “The Political Theologies of Brazil’s Shifting Religious Landscapes and their Effects on Environmental Attitudes and Local Politics.”
- Sivert Angel, Standard Research Grant:
- “Exporting Sin: The Early Lutheran Mission to the Danish – Norwegian Colonies under Frederik IV and Christian VI (1705 – 1746).”
- Anne Katrine de Hemmer Gudme, Standard Research Grant:
- “Biblical Food: Reading the Hebrew Bible through the Kitchen.”
- Nina Hoel, Standard Research Grant:
- “Religious Placemaking: Queering Space, Transforming Mosques.”
- Linn Tonstad, Standard Research Grant:
- “Contesting European Belongings in a Postsecular Age: Religion in the Queer Techno Scene.”
- Laura Slaughter, Standard Research Grant:
- “Supernatural Folk Science in Early Christian Coptic Texts: Distant Reading from a Socio-Ecological Perspective.”
- Anne Hege Grung, 亚博娱乐官网_亚博pt手机客户端登录sprosjekt for ? m?te utfordringer i samfunn og n?ringsliv:
- “Co-Creating Spiritual Care in a Universal Welfare State Facing Religious and Cultural Plurality (CoCare).”
- Hallgeir Elstad and Tarald Rasmussen, Standard Research Grant (Partner):
- “The Norwegian Pastor, 1537-1920: Norway’s first Profession from Reformation and Absolutism towards Democracy and Welfare State.”
- Marius Timmann Mjaaland, fellesl?ft/tverrfaglig forskningsprosjekt (Partner):
- “Increasing Availability and Function of Donor Organs (Anoxilife).”
We wish you the best of luck
We wish you the best of luck as these projects are evaluated by the NFR panels. Indeed, judging from the recent and ongoing debates about the quality of the NFR evaluation process and all the problems that these debates have highlighted, ‘luck’ is not an entirely misplaced word here! TF, too, is in dialogue with both NFR and the Rector of UiO on these issues, and it is likely that there will soon be an evaluation of the NFR system itself. However, as has also been noted in these discussions, regardless of how the individual projects ultimately fare in the competition, the research that has already gone into them will still be useful and may lead to significant advances in their respective fields.
Teamwork is at its very core, about finding and triggering our potential as scholars and as a faculty
In the end, then, if approached perceptively, the project-application system for distributing research funding, even with all its weaknesses, may lead to significant advances in scholarship based on precisely the collaborative efforts they generate. It’s not only about money. Which brings us back to where we began, highlighting Harari’s insights into cooperation as a key to understand our place in history and in the world, also for us as academics. Teamwork, then, is not only a pleasant way of organising things and generating collegial friendship; it is also, at its very core, about finding and triggering our potential as scholars and as a faculty. As we leave February behind and move towards spring, this has become clearer than ever.