Planning of Skopje stakeholder workshop

Today I attended a meeting via Skype in relation to planning of a stakeholder workshop to be held in Skopje, Macedonia on June 8th by the COST action GroupHouseNet (Synergy for preventing damaging behaviour in group housed pigs and chickens).

Election to the UiS board: Electoral program

Now in April I am running for reelection as the representative for temporarily employed education and research staff in the board of the University of Stavanger (which I have been since the autumn of 2012). Here is my electoral program:

a) Morten Tønnessen

b) 37 years old

c) Associate Professor in philosophy at Department of Health Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences

d) Background: Tønnessen has been the representative for temporarily employed education and research staff in the UiS board since the autumn of 2012. He defended his doctoral degree in semiotics/philosophy – with a case study on Norwegian wolf management – in 2011 at the University of Tartu (Estonia). Tønnessen has held several NGO positions (he is currently Chair of Minding Animals Norway (http://mindinganimals.no/), secretary of Nordic Association for Semiotic Studies (http://nordicsemiotics.org/) and board member of International Society of Code Biology (http://www.codebiology.org/)), and he works interdisciplinarily. In capacity of being a philosopher/semiotician who has been doing research on biological/ecological phenomena for some ten years, he has connections to the humanities as well as to social science and natural science. Academic blog: http://UtopianRealism.blogspot.com.

e) Morten Tønnessen will keep working for:

• Increased internationalisation (enhanced research mobility included)
• Higher aspirations for research (publication points, citations, participation at international conferences etc.)
• Good conditions for interdisciplinary research and educational activities
• A green university

See also Norwegian text.

Report from China to appear in Norwegian media

One of the talks I appreciated the most at the First World Congress of Environmental History, in Copenhagen, August 4-8, was "The Rise, Development, and Influence of the Environmental NGOs in China" by professor Xueqin Mei and Da Mao from Beijing, China. I have composed an article based on their talk. This article has been accepted for publication (possibly only in a few weeks) in a regional Norwegian newspaper with fairly good circulation.