NEWDAY
NEWDAY – the Nansen East West Dialogue Academy gathers university students from East-Asia and the Nordic region and Europe to engage in dialogue on current global challenges.
Creating better relations through mutual understanding, by seeking harmony in diversity.
We are inviting students to a summer school and training camp for cultural understanding and cross-cultural communication. We offer lectures, discussions, socializing, workshops and excursions. The social and academic climate offered at NEWDAY is creative, open-minded and challenging.
Lillehammer and its natural surroundings are beautiful. The Nordic summer days are long, and even the nights are full of light.
The idea of a Dialogue Academy has grown out of the annual course «Understanding Asia», presented at the Nansen Academy by Nordic and Asian scholars since 2014. In a fast-changing and increasingly multipolar world, there is an urgent need to understand and empathize with diverse societies and cultures. Relations between the Nordic countries and North East Asian countries are long lasting and positive. Mutually we are rather similar, while in relation to each other the two regions are quite different. Alternative ideas and solutions can be discussed from our different positions and perspectives. Both regions have established institutional bodies that are mandated to promote cooperation and mutual understanding. The Nansen East-West Dialogue Academy project operates in line with this basic idea of promoting regional and cross-regional cooperation.
NEWDAY provides a platform for university students from the Nordic region/Europe and East Asia, to engage in dialogue on current global challenges, to learn from each other, and foster harmonious relations between prospective future leaders. The academy provides a unique opportunity to learn and have a dialogue about contemporary issues based on acquired knowledge of great Western and East Asian thinkers and humanitarians, presented by distinguished scholars from the Nordic region and leading universities in the East Asian region.
The NEWDAY project has in the past been supported by the Nordic Council of Ministers (NCM) and the East Asian Trilateral Cooperation Secretariat (TCS). Academically NIAS – The Nordic Institute of Asian Studies at University of Copenhagen, representing a consortium of 27 Nordic universities, was from the start the leading coordinating institution of the project, together with the Nansen Academy at Lillehammer, Norway. In East Asia, the project has been supported by scholars at Fudan University, University of Hong Kong and Shandong University in China, by Kyoto University and Tokai University in Japan, and Yonsei University and Korea University in South Korea.
NEWDAY 2026 is organized by:
Applications for NEWDAY 2026 currently open (limited number of places)
Note:
– The applicants will be admitted from 20th of January 2026 and onwards, until the course is full
– There might be alterations to the course and the program in the case of unexpected events or changing circumstances
The course will last 9 days from July 29 to August 6 2026.
The summer school offers training programs and lectures. There will be workshops and dialogue groups, addressing current affairs. In addition, museum visits and walks in the serenity of the surrounding Norwegian nature.
The homes of two Nobel Prize laureates of literature who lived in the vicinity will welcome us: Sigrid Undset´s Bjerkebæk and Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson´s Aulestad.
If the weather permits, we will sit talking around the campfire in the light summer nights in the garden of Nansen Academy.
A more detailed program will be available at a later date.
Price, in double room: 11.500,- NOK
Price, in single room, 14.500,- NOK
The price includes participation in the whole program, excursions, food and lodging. Travel to and from Lillehammer must be covered by the participants
Nansenskolen
Bjørnstjerne Bjørnsonsgate 2
2609 Lillehammer
Tel: +47 61 26 54 00
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