The Timeline

2023 marks the 60th anniversary for the cooperation between academic institutions in Bergen and Sudan. These 60 years have fostered not only close partnerships between institutions and fruitful collegial ties between scholars in Bergen and Sudan; they have also forged strong friendships and firmly established that the overarching view on cooperation that has been a foundation of the cooperation all along – mutual exchange of knowledge and learning – yields high quality research. The Bergen-Sudan links have had consequences reaching far beyond the cooperation itself. Frontiers have been pushed within disciplines. Applied anthropology was brought into the Department of Social Anthropology at the University of Bergen (UiB). It led to the establishment of a vibrant milieu in archaeology at the University of Khartoum (UofK). It formed a base on which other research environments thrived and grew also in other parts of the world. Researchers in the Bergen-Sudan network have been highly successful in securing funding from the Norwegian Embassy, Norad and the Research Council of Norway, and have published extensively in journals all over the world. The cooperation has also contributed to make Sudanese voices a force to reckon with on the international scene and in academic debates on the developments in the country. And last but not least: The Bergen-Sudan cooperation has made Bergen an internationally renowned hub on Sudan studies.