During the past 4 months, we (the management team in Bergen, consisting of Edvard and Eilin) have been working on getting the OceanStates project on its feet, and we are getting close! Here is a very brief summary:
We started out in May 2018, with designing logos, making handout folders and posters, and generally providing the project with informational material. From April to June 2018, we had the pleasure of hosting our first visiting scholar under the OceanStates Visiting Researcher programme, Professor Elisabeth Holland from the USP in Fiji, with whom we had inspiring conversations about the beginning of the project. Edvard has been busy with attending meetings and doing fieldwork both in the UN in New York, and at Arendalsuka in Norway, and is already deeply engaged in anthropological studies of policy and other OceanStates issues. Meanwhile, I have spent considerable amounts of time on building websites for both the project and for the Bergen Pacific Studies research group (www.uib.no/en/oceanstates and www.pacific.w.uib.no), as well as starting the construction of our Document Collection, and, of course, this blog. It is our intention that this blog will contribute to a necessary transparency in OceanStates, and as we get deeper into the running and happenings of the project, more of the project’s participants will share stories of different formats from their work with OceanStates issues.
But for now; almost there with the infrastructure! Stay tuned…
– Eilin