MNU kicks off fifth ‘Theveli’ international conference

Maldives National University (MNU), on Monday, has kicked off an international conference, ‘Theveli 2022’, centered around educational research.

This is the fifth such conference organized by the university. The conference this year, which started today, will continue till tomorrow and is themed around 'research for nation building'.

At a special ceremony held at MNU this morning, the conference was inaugurated by Vice President Faisal Naseem.

Speaking at the ceremony, VP Faisal stressed that as politics and policies backed by proper scientific research yield better results, there is a growing need to connect research with nation-building.

"Research is paramount to achieving meaningful development, without which our developmental efforts will be baseless," he had said.

“And the knowledge we gain from research is what makes the cornerstones of our nation-building efforts,” he added.

Over 200 people have registered for this year’s ‘Theveli’ conference. Whilst almost 100 research papers were submitted for the conference – MNU had only accepted 65. The research papers will be presented in different categories, in eight sessions.

Although most research papers were submitted from Maldives – foreign nations that MNU received submissions from this year include India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Pakistan, Nigeria, Latvia and Croatia.

MNU said that the purpose of the event is to ensure the higher education system in the Maldives is based upon research – as well as to make MNU a higher educational establishment that produces and strengthens knowledge.

They also added another purpose of the conference to be to aid important national decisions through academic research.