Øystein S. LaBianca, professor of anthropology and Institute of Archaeology associate director, will join an international team of anthropologists, archaeologists, geographers, historians, and sociologists in a study of “Global Moments in the Levant,” (the area of the Middle East commonly referred to as the Holy Land). The team of 16 researchers will be headed by Leif Manger, professor of anthropology, University of Bergen, Norway, to study “breakthrough events that change people’s lives and their futures.”

In Feb. 2005, the Norwegian Research Council (NRC) informed the team that their application, “Global Moments in the Levant: Towards an Understanding of a Contact Zone Between Peoples, Cultures, and States,” had been approved for funding over the next four years in the amount of 16 million Norwegian kroners (approximately $2.6 million USD). The team submitted one of 17 successful applications out of 263 in an annual competition for 250 million Norwegian kroners (approximately $39.9 million USD) of NRC funding for basic research in all fields.

According to LaBianca, visiting researcher at the University of Bergen during spring 2004 and co-author of the proposal with Leif Manger, global moments are “fundamental cultural changes that lead to new ways of thinking, to new worlds of knowledge, to new social worlds, and to new types of personal and collective identities. The emergence of writing and of literacy, for example, led to new forms of recording and storing information which, in turn, changed the social organization of societies, bringing in their wake new forms of inequality and privilege. Such developments typically call for significant adaptation leading to new forms of cooperation or conflict.”

Participation in this study provides an excellent opportunity to broaden our understanding and may have significant implications for the work of Adventist education. The team met in Bergen, Norway, for their first organizational meeting in May.

University Relations news release