“We need to spread our knowledge”
Dr. Firdaus Yusoff came to Denmark to study the biofuel process. He left with much more than just academic achievements. The stay in a foreign country sparked his scientific curiosity and convinced him to emphasize that scientists need to serve the public by sharing results and knowledge.
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Indigenous Knowledge (IK) and the new face of Uganda’s PhD
The first time I spoke to Dr. Expedito Nuwategeka was on the telephone. In my mind I saw the image of a 60-year old man sitting on a wooden chair with piles of books at his table. However, that is not the image I arrived to at Gulu University on an April afternoon to meet him.
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What does success look like for the SDGs?
Governments, civil society actors such as large businesses, development consultancies and universities all have adopted the SDG framework and state that all future work will be carried out with them in mind. But what exactly are the SDGs? and are there any gaps in the SDG framework which hinders progress?
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“I want to give back what I learned to our society”
When Dr. Norazana Ibrahim did her Ph.D. project at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), she could confirm that agricultural waste should be an important energy resource in Malaysia. Now comes the difficult part of commercializing the technology in the Malaysian waste management industries.
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Mr. ENRECA and the Grant that Lifted Gulu University
In Gulu University’s history of nearly two decades, the story of ENRECA is told and retold with passion. The four-year Danish International Development Agency (DANIDA) funded 10 million DKK project was the university’s turning point in many ways: It delivered its first PhD, its first female PhD, 20 master’s degrees, several research collaborations, experience in managing large grants and a lot more.
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“The spectacled bear just doesn’t sell as well as the polar bear”
The Colombian hydroclimatologist Daniel Ruíz Carrascal is one out of only three IPCC authors from Colombia. He has dedicated his life to studying climate change, especially in the mountains and the páramos (the moorlands). And he is worried about the future - he doesn’t have a clue what will happen with those fast and important changes.
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How much damage did your trip to Roskilde Festival do to the environment, this year?
Most young people are becoming increasingly aware of their environmental impact, making sensible decisions on a daily basis, to reduce their carbon footprint, and to improve upon their self-sustainability. This involves continuously implementing sacrifices into daily life, for the benefit of the planet. Unfortunately, choosing to spend part of your summer at a festival can be a huge strain on your overall footprint.
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Crisis of Ethnicity: Understanding Uganda through a Tribe Lens
Many Ugandans are quick to identify themselves by tribe - 56 tribes there are in total. They like to describe themselves, and are also often described by others, as humble, welcoming and peaceful but Uganda’s political history hardly reflects the peaceful part. When I visit Associate Professor Charles Amone on a July afternoon, Kyambogo University is in recess so it is generally quiet. His reflections paint a picture of a country less united than the world may be led to think – a crisis that fuels inequality and conflicts from within.
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When the Amazon is on fire, one of the many species affected is the Pink River Dolphin
Meet a Colombian scientist, passionately researching about the pink river dolphin, a crucial species to protect aquatic ecosystems in the Amazon. The enormous habitat of those border-crossing dolphins makes them a key-species to protect big areas. If they are well, so is the Amazon. And when the Amazon is on fire, it affects species like the dolphin, as well.
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Kenya: The troubles of a science PhD from the West
Graduate students of the London School of Economics and Political Science gathered at Kenya’s coast in September 2018, where the Secretary-General of the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) Dr Mukhisa Kituyi told them: “With your international credibility, it is easier and tempting to leave and take out of the continent the little intellectual resource that could solve problems their countries face.”
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