At the 2013 PopPov Conference in Oslo, Norway, PRB staff interviewed Jan Monteverde Haakonsen, special adviser in the Department of Cooperation and Development Research at the Research Council of Norway (RCN) about RCN’s role in the PopPov research initiative.In the interview, Haakonsen outlines the structure of RCN, and explains that the council acts as an independent adviser to the Norwegian government on research matters. ECONPOP, RCN’s funding scheme under the PopPov initiative, has supported six research projects, and has a total budget of approximately NOK 25 million, or $USD 4.3 million. Research has focused primarily on the role of gender as it relates to reproductive health and demographic issues.Haakonsen highlights the fact that the ECONPOP research initiative is the first one within RCN that explicitly looks at the relationships between population dynamics, economic development, poverty, and reproductive health. In that sense, the Hewlett Foundation’s PopPov initiative has had an important impact on this line of research in Norway. Haakonsen hopes that the initiative will act as a catalyst for increasing interest in these issues within the Norwegian research community.