Organization

The ECOPAS Organization

ECOPAS was hosted by four European university centres of excellence on Pacific research, in Norway, France, the United Kingdom and the Netherlands; and by two major Pacific institutions – the University of the South Pacific (USP), Fiji (a regional institution co-owned by 12 Pacific Islands nations) and the National Research Institute of Papua New Guinea. Through the USP’s network of member countries each with its own satellite university centre, ECOPAS built a Pacific-wide reach. Concurrently, stable linkages were built with policymakers and diplomatic representatives in Europe, in the Pacific, and at the United Nations. ECOPAS was the first-ever network to develop extensive, durable collaboration between European and Pacific scholarly institutions, as well as between research institutions and local, national and international policymaking agencies.

The ECOPAS Participants are:

  1. Bergen Pacific Studies Research Group (BPS). Located at the University of Bergen, Norway, in the Department of Social Anthropology. http://pacific.w.uib.no/
  2. Centre de Recherche et de Documentation sur l’Océanie (CREDO). Located at Aix Marseille University, Marseille, France, and operated with the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
    (CNRS) and the École des hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS). http://www.pacific-credo.fr/
  3. Centre for Pacific Studies (CPS). Located at University of St. Andrews, Scotland, UK, in the Department of Social Anthropology. http://www.st-andrews.ac.uk/pacificstudies/
  4. The University of the South Pacific (USP). Main campus located in Suva, Fiji. The USP is a regional university with campuses in 12 Pacific countries. Participating centres are the School of Marine Sciences, the Oceania Centre for Arts, Culture and Pacific Studies, and the Pacific Centre for Environment & Sustainable Development. http://www.usp.ac.fj/
  5. National Research Institute (NRI), Port Moresby, Papua New Guinea. The National Research Institute is Papua New Guinea’s leading think tank on public policy and development-related issues and trends. http://www.nri.org.pg/
  6. Centre for Pacific and Asian Studies (CPAS). Located at Radboud University Nijmegen, the Netherlands, in the Department of Cultural Anthropology and Development Studies. http://cpasru.nl/