The UiS board: Electoral program for Morten Tønnessen

Yesterday I finished and submitted my electoral program etc. in preparation of the upcoming election of representative and deputy representatives for temporarily employed education and research staff in the board of University of Stavanger. The Norwegian version has been posted in my Norwegian language blog Utopisk realisme. For the English version, see below.

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ENGLISH

a) Morten Tønnessen

b) 38 years old

c) Associate Professor of philosophy at Department of Health Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences; Project leader at UiS for the Norwegian-Estonian research project “Animals in changing environments: Cultural mediation and semiotic analysis” (EEA Norway Grants EMP151)

d) I have been the representative for temporarily employed education and research staff in the UiS board 2012–2013, and 2^nd deputy representative 2013–2014. I defended my doctoral degree in semiotics/philosophy – with a case study on Norwegian wolf management – in 2011 at the University of Tartu (Estonia). Since 2013 I’ve been Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Springer journal Biosemiotics. I have held several NGO positions (amongst other positions I am currently Chair of Minding Animals Norway and secretary of Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies), and I work interdisciplinarily. In capacity of being a philosopher/semiotician who has been doing research on biological/ecological phenomena for some ten years, I have connections to the humanities as well as to social science and natural science. Academic blog: http://UtopianRealism.blogspot.com.

e) My goals are:

• A professional, leading university
• Increased internationalisation (enhanced staff mobility included).
• Higher aspirations for research.
• Good conditions for interdisciplinary research and educational activities.
• UiS must at all faculties become a university that combines general education and applied studies. Today general education is not integrated into all degrees. This gives us lower credibility than Norway’s «old» universities.
• Support to the process towards establishment of a Faculty of Health Studies.
• A green university
• Petroleum research that contributes to enhanced oil and gas recovery and production in new/vulnerable areas must be phased out as existing contracts expire.
• I favour a restructuring through which current expertise in petroleum research can in the future be made use of e.g. within a major investment in renewable energy research.
• Environmental ethics must be established as a central subject at TN.
• Emphasis on social science and humanities perspectives on climate issues.
• An ethically aware and responsible university
• In the autumn of 2012 the UiS board, on my suggestion, asked the university director to study how UiS can follow up the action plan for ethical trade by setting some concrete measures for implementation in the period 2013–2016. The board’s decision must be conducted by the director, and such issues must be taken seriously.
• More transparency in management/leadership processes.
• Long-term, global perspectives rather than short-term, provincial concerns.
• The university’s social responsibility must be understood as more than the sum total of market orientation and government directives. UiS has responsibility for contributing to the good of society.
• UiS must therefore take a vision of the good society as starting point for its research policy.

See also:

Three nominated for UiS board election