Strategic Partners – University of Stavanger

University of Stavanger (UIS), located on the south-west coast of Norway. It educates 12,000 students and employs 1,600 employees. In constant cooperation on a regional, national and international scale, the University enjoys an open and creative climate for education and the dissemination of research and innovation.

The University of Stavanger is international and innovative and is a driving force for the advancement of knowledge and the process of social change. The university is divided into six faculties with a total of thirteen schools and the Archaeological Museum. The university also has a unit dealing with lifelong learning.

The university aims to increase its knowledge base through internationalization, thanks to programs such as Erasmus and Nordplus. It has over 400 partnership agreements with institutions around the world for student and academic exchange programs. Since 2012, the University of Stavanger is the only Norwegian member of the European Consortium of Innovative Universities (ECU) (http://www.eciu.org/). ECIU is a leading network of close collaboration by promoting research-based innovation. Since its inception in 2002 as a Nordic network, it has developed into an international research network of over 90 researchers and PhD students from 9 countries.

The university owns many regional, national and international research centres. Projects range from offshore wind energy, risk management and health technologies. Three research centres are designed for the “Integrated System of Counteracting Domestic Violence” project: Centre for learning environment and behavioural research, and The Reading Centre. (https://www.uis.no/research-and-phd-studies/research-centres/) and one of the leading Norwegian competence circles in the field of kindergarten research – FILIORUM (https://www.uis.no/forskning -og-ph-d / forskningssentre / filiorum-senter-for-barnehageforskning / forskning /, funded by the Research Council of Norway).

Striving to constantly adapt to the present and future needs of society is a self-definition of the University. Innovation and entrepreneurship are at the heart of educational programs, and turning research results into products, services, businesses and jobs is a major area of concern. That is why the University has an Innovation Research Center https://www.uis.no/research-and-phd-studies/research-centres/centre-for-innovation-research/.

The University of Stavanger has ambitious goals that make it a desirable research partner through critical and independent research. The 2019 research report showed that UIS showed positive developments in all research indicators in 2019 in terms of: quality and quantity of scientific publications, EU grant award and The Research Counsel of Norway, as well as PhD and Habilitation .

The Department of Scientific Research (FA) within the University is responsible for overall strategic advice and evaluation for the University’s management team, with an emphasis on research activities. FA is responsible for the secretariat: Research Committee, Research Ethics Committee, FANE UiS. The FA offers administrative services and tools to promote the university’s strategic research goals. FA contributes to ensuring the quality of research through close cooperation with other units in UiS and with entities of regional development.

Under Horizon 2020 Project, UIS received 5 Marie Skłodowska-Curie (MSCA) Innovative Training Networks (ITN) projects as a partner and 1 Enviro Citizen (coordinator) project under the Science with and for Society (SWAFS) program. SU has been cooperating with MSCA for several years on purpose and has developed, inter alia, own support programs under the MSCA Individual Fellowship and MSCA ITN. The university maintains the success rate of applications for the Horizon 2020 program at 29%. This is one of the highest success rates of Norwegian universities.

Examples of relevant research topics

Research at the University of Stavanger takes place through doctoral programs, defined research areas, centers and many individual projects. Many of the externally funded research activities are also carried out in cooperation with the research institute – the Norwegian Research Center NORCE AS.

Additionally, there is a research group “Professional Relations” at the University. This group is involved in interdisciplinary research to improve the quality of relational work in social care professions such as nursing, teaching and others in the fields of health, care and social work. It also has a research group on social services that studies how social services in Norway and the Nordic countries are changing due to social challenges.

The university also runs the COLAB project, which focuses on cooperation within Criminal Justice Services. The aim of COLAB is to validate the change laboratory model ready for implementation in practice. It also builds a community of practitioners that enriches international research potential and collaboration to achieve this goal. Getting to know this model may be useful for our Polish partner, as well as for the implementation and evaluation of the domestic violence model.

It is also worth mentioning the interdisciplinary research on child welfare in the field of childcare, protective work, education and research. Particularly noteworthy is the childcare policy and laws (CWS), enriched with the experience of specialists, children and adolescents and their families who come into contact with CWS.

Department of Social Sciences, University of Stavanger

The Faculty of Social Studies offers undergraduate studies in Social Work and Childcare. It also offers several master’s programs, two of which are international programs in English that also deal with family issues and domestic violence. WNS UIS is the coordinator of the Erasmus Mundus Joint Master degree (EMJMD) and Erasmus Mundus consortium on social work with families and children (MFAMILY). He works with partner institutions such as: the Institute of the University of Lisbon (Portugal), the University of Gothenburg in Sweden and the University of Makere (Uganda).

NORCE Norwegian Research Center AS

NORCE Norwegian Research Center AS is one of the largest independent research institutes in Norway. Together with the NORCE subsidiaries, the group employs 1,000 people from all over the world and has a turnover of over 1.3 billion Norwegian kroner. The main shareholders of NORCE are: University of Bergen, University of Stavanger, University of Tromsø and University of Agder. NORCE is a new and future-proof research institute with specialist knowledge in many areas. NORCE conducts research and innovation in the fields of energy, healthcare, climate, environment, social sciences and technology.

NORCE is the owner of the Norwegian Research Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress (NKVTS) https://www.nkvts.no/english/. NKVTS aims to prevent and reduce the health and social consequences of violence and traumatic stress. It prepares, informs and reports on good practices and contributes to the development of the academic area of counteracting violence and traumatic stress. On behalf of the Norwegian authorities, NORCE also runs the Regional Centre for Mental Health and Child and Youth Care. The Centre contributes to the dissemination of knowledge and experience in the field of evidence-based practice and high-quality research.

The social science department of NORCE will cooperate with the Project “Integrated System of Counteracting Domestic Violence”. The department is involved in research across a wide range of social domains: health and welfare, migration and integration, innovation, public policy and services, work life and more.

Experience with previous research and research projects: Nødland, Studsrød and Gjerstad

Studsrød, Gjerstad and Nødland have research experience in the field of family support and domestic violence.

Nødland is part of NORCE in the Welfare research group of the Department of Social Sciences. The main research areas are social care, health services and immigrant integration issues, as well as issues relating to the organization of social and health care, the use of technology and the approach to users. These are important areas from the point of view of the Project.

Gjerstad and Nødland participated in the NORCE: PAR MIGRATION NAVIGATOR (WLB_GE) project on socio-cultural and psychological predictions about work-life balance and gender equality. The project explored the issues of WLB (Work-Life Balance) and GE (Gender Equality), including the question of what happens when people move from a less egalitarian (Polish) to a more egalitarian (Norwegian) culture. The project shed light on family life and gender roles within couples (Polish migrant marriages in Norway, Norwegian and Polish marriages in Poland), general and gender-related acculturation processes, re-conceptualization of childhood and parenthood, and meetings of Polish economic migrants with a number of municipal services . The project received funding from the Polish-Norwegian Research Program conducted by the National Center for Research and Development under the Norwegian Financial Mechanism 2009-2014 under Project Agreement No. Pol-Nor / 202343/62/2013. Gjerstad and Nødland also participated in the project “Labour migration to Western Norway – labour migrants as a resource in regional development”. The project offered an insight into the role of labour migration for the western part of Norway and how this role has been recognized and reflected to varying degrees in municipal policy. The project was financed by the Regional Research Fund and was implemented in 2013-2016. Gjerstad and Nødland also worked in research projects on implementing innovations in municipal health services.

Studsrød participated in PERARES: Project “Public Engagement with Research and Research Engagement with Society” (2010-2014). PERARES was a four-year project set up under the European Community’s 7th Framework Program to strengthen public engagement in research (PER) by involving scientists and civil society organizations in the formulation of research agendas and the research process. He was involved, inter alia, w Work Package 5 “PER Structuring in Domestic Violence Research” Obtained relevant pan-European data and recommendations for research into domestic violence. Moreover, in cooperation with non-governmental organizations, he conducted pilot projects: “Domestic violence during pregnancy” and the exchange of experiences between Science Shop Brussels, Cambridge and Stavanger.

UIS and Studsrød also participated in the four-year program (2014-2018): Family Complexity and Social Work: A Comparative Study of Family Social Work in Different Welfare Systems (FASCK). The aim was to analyze how social workers in different contexts understand the concepts of family and how they describe their own practices and outcomes with the family. The study used data from eight countries (Norway, Sweden, England, Ireland, Chile, Mexico, Lithuania and Bulgaria) representing four different family policy systems (demilitarized, partially demilitarized, family and again family) and four different service areas: children, drug / alcohol abuse, migrant families and disabilities. The project added to theoretical analyses of welfare systems, family policy and family support, professional discretion and made methodological contributions to cross-sectional national research.

Studsrød and other universities, as a department of social sciences, also participated in the national development and research program “New Childcare Services” (“Det nye barnevernet” (DNB) 2008-2011). The program was funded by the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth and Family (Bufdir) with the aim of mapping people using child welfare services and understanding how parents perceive contacts.