We met up with another one of our PEN members, Mona Nordberg! 

Mona is an experienced Police Advisor currently posted to the OSCE Secretariat in Vienna. She has a long career in policing and has served in numerous peace missions with the UN and other organizations.  

During Mona’s time as a PEN member, she was a Community Oriented Policing (COP) advisor to the Standing Police Capacity in Italy. From here, she frequently served abroad in various missions, such as Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, among others. 

During our conversation, she gave us insight into her experience as a PEN member with the ICT4COP project. 

The experienced Police Advisor explained that the PEN members specifically contribute to the network through their professional expertise in policing.  

In Mona’s case, she was connected to the network when working for the UN Police as a COP Advisor. Mona was therefore able to give her valuable professional insights on COP processes in post-conflict environments to the project.  

She explained that she contributed by attending several of the project’s in-person meetings (pre-pandemic times), as well as giving the researchers’ input on materials they sent her from the project. 

Mona explained that she really enjoyed being part of the PEN network. She states she was able to both contribute to and benefit from it in several ways: 

“I definitely enjoyed it. It was not only great to contribute with your own expertise, but you also learn a lot. You learn from seeing other people’s work and reflections, but also from the in-meeting discussions we had. So, I found this very rewarding, and I would gladly do something like that again.”  

When asked about her thoughts on the e-learning material and what the benefits of having such a resource was, Mona said: 

“One of the other things was when I had the opportunity to review the final material, which was sent by the researchers. I could then get more of a comprehensive view of what it actually was and how it was done” 

Mona also emphasised how she was able to use material from the project in her own work: 

“In my role here now where we’re developing COP projects, I know that I can find useful material from there, which I wouldn’t have known of if I wasn’t a part of it. I also had contact with the police academy training, and they’re involved with my project in Armenia, which is a good outcome of me being a PEN member. 

On the continuous value of the PEN network, Mona also she pointed to the exchange of experiences and insights between project members. 

Mona is looking forward to hearing more updates from the PEN network in the future. The center is happy to announce that even further activity can be expected from August on when Ingrid and the ICT4COP center are joined by four new interns! PEN members can look forward to a mailing list as well as more updates on our web pages.