Sanjoy Hazarika at the World Social Science Forum, Norway

HTML clipboardSanjoy Hazarika, C-NES Managing Trustee, participated in the World Social Science Forum at Bergen, Norway, as a special invitee to the international conference from May 10-12 that drew hundreds of social scientists from across the world, including Nobel Laureate Prof. Amartya Sen, as well as the chairman of the Intern-Government Panel for Climate Change, Dr. RK Pachauri, which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007. Mr. Hazarika, the only participant from the North East at the international conference, chaired a panel discussion on “The future of armed conflict” on May 12. The panelists included Håvard Hegre, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Oslo, Indra de Soysa, Professor, Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Sociology and Political Science, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Trondheim, and Major General A N M Muniruzzaman, President of the Bangladesh Institute of Peace Studies in Dhaka.

According to the organizers, “the purpose of the panels (on conflict) is to engage academics and practitioners in a dialogue on conflict resolution and prevention. The speakers are not supposed to present detailed current work in progress, but rather summarize the theoretical and empirical literature in their own broader study areas, with a primary reference to research” being conducted on these issues.

The larger conference included plenary sessions, parallel sessions (panels) and poster sessions. India was represented by a group of distinguished scholars, included faculty from the Jawaharlal Nehru University and the Tata Institute of Social Sciences.