Dan Banik

Dan Banik is a Professor of Political Science and Director of the Oslo SDG Initiative at the Center for Development and the Environment at the University of Oslo. Outside of Norway he holds a position as an Extraordinary Professor at the University of Pretoria.

Career
Banik is a part of several projects at the University of Oslo and in collaboration with other universities outside of Norway. Mostly the projects revolve around development and governance in Africa and Asia. Recently, in October 2023, as the Director of the Oslo SDG Initiative he hosted the 27th Wider Annual Lecture, in partnership with UNU-WIDER, in Oslo, where Pinelopi Goldberg, former Chief Economist of the World Bank, held a lecture.

From 2012 to 2017 he was an Adjunct Professor at China Agricultural University in Beijing and he held several positions at Stanford University between 2010 and 2017. Between 2014 and 2017, Banik was a Consulting Scholar at Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law (CDDRL) at the Stanford University, focusing his research on Malawi and Zambia.

Banik has worked with the World Bank as well where he served as the head of the Norwegian-Finnish Trust Fund. Additionally, he sat on the board of the Crown Prince and Crown Princess' Foundation, a foundation that focuses on the support and empowerment of young individuals in Norway.

The Norwegian Minister of International Development, Anne Beathe Tvinnereim, appointed Banik to be a part of an expert group that created a report, in 2023, for the Norwegian government concerning finance and development measures to reach the Sustainable Development Goals. Banik was also, previously, the supervisor for the Minister when she wrote her master's thesis.

In Pursuit of Development is a podcast hosted by Banik where he discusses development issues and topics such as poverty eradication, democracy and climate change with other leading experts and academics. The professor is often referred to as an expert on the topics himself, and is regularly interviewed to give expert opinion in Norwegian media. Banik's podcast reaches a world-wide audience with listeners from more than 140 countries. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Banik created online courses about sustainability that were published through University of Oslo's website which attracted more than 12,000 students from all over the world.

Personal life
Banik is married to Vibeke Kieding Banik, who also works at the University of Oslo.