There are major socio-cultural differences between the north and south, according to researcher Mervi Heikkinen. Many students in Northern Sweden, Norway and Finland are the first in their family to pursue higher education.

Academic disagreement and critical engagement are essential to knowledge production. But the line is crossed when critique targets the person rather than the scholarship, writes Hande Eslen-Ziya. 

‘Pregnant women, like the rest of the population, have chronic or acute conditions that require medical treatment,’ says Hedvig Nordeng. She recently won the NAR Brain Power Award for her research.

Last year, Signe Uldbjerg’s research on digital violence against women became a hot political issue at the Danish Folketinget. Followed by a political statement on the relationship between activism and research, outrage from Danish academia and a debate on academic freedom.

The Hungarian researcher receives the University of Oslo's Human Rights Award for her work in academic freedom and institutional autonomy. Gender research is like the canary in the coal mine, she says.

"I believe that any sentence you utter is an expression of a judgment. It’s a judgment of how you see the world", Toril Moi says.