Norway

Drawing from law, sociology of law, criminology, political science, and migration studies more generally, this multidisciplinary course provides a wholesome understanding of the many debates and dilemmas surrounding international migration and its management today. The course addresses a broad range of topics and themes, including the legal regulation and institutional management of migration; ordering through labels, terms, and categories; sovereignty, control, and externalization; citizenship and statelessness; securitization and criminalization of migration; smuggling, trafficking, and instrumentalization debates; as well as gendered, racial, and other aspects of migration and its management. It covers a combination of both canonical and newer academic texts in this area and draws additional insights from policy documents, reports, fiction literature, and films.

Sustainable development is the red thread throughout this course. The course builds on the principle of sustainable development and analyzes how it is reflected in main international treaties on the protection of the environment. Central questions on legal methodology, legal sources, and environmental principles are addressed. The course introduces more specific areas in international environmental law, such as those addressing the conservation of biological diversity, protection of the marine environment, reduction of plastic pollution, and addressing climate change. In addition, overarching topics include the relationship between environmental protection and human rights, and international trade and investment law.

This course uses general equilibrium models to study international trade, industrial structures, and structural change. The models are used to discuss and analyze the role of comparative advantage, trade, and productivity differences for industrial structures, resource allocation, and welfare. The course also provides a thorough introduction to game theory to analyze competition in markets with imperfect competition and strategic behavior between firms. It analyzes the impact of trade in markets with imperfect competition and how the gains from trade depend on market structures.

This course provides an introduction to genetic studies on behavior, emotions, and cognition - a psychological discipline known as "behavior genetics." The course covers basic concepts in quantitative and molecular genetic sciences, and how these can be applied to study animal behavior, human traits and disorders, and socioeconomic outcomes. This includes studies of genetic and environmental contributions and how statistical models of complex traits are analyzed with computer software. The course covers development of research skills for practical implementation of quantitative genetic statistical methods applicable throughout the life sciences.

The subject provides a broad introduction to plants' development, function, and interactions with other organisms. Emphasis is placed on the connection from genes and genomes to cells and organs in different plant types, and how the evolution, development and function of plants is understood in such a perspective. In an overall focus, the role of plants in society is highlighted in this perspective, such as domestication, agriculture, environment, climate, and genetic engineering.

This course accompanies the build up to the 2024 United States election, election night, and its aftermath by offering a lecture series with different speakers from the Department of Political Science, other departments at the University of Oslo, and from outside the university. Besides the question of who will most likely succeed in the presidential election, the course introduces the way in which presidential elections work, the role of other electoral races that take place in parallel (e.g. for members of Congress), how the election will shape U.S. politics, and what impact the election will have on different policy fields both in the United States and globally.

The course gives an introduction to probability theory in a measure-theoretic setting. Among the topics discussed are: Probability measures, σ-algebras, conditional expectations, convergence of random variables, the law of large numbers, characteristic functions, the central limit theorem, filtrations, and martingales in discrete time. Recommended prerequisites include calculus, linear algebra, and probability and statistical modeling. 

This course introduces genetically informed social science, with a focus on how genetic factors and environments that siblings do not share influence social inequality. It discusses how to think critically and creatively about the complex interplay between genetics, randomness/luck, and social structures in modern societies. The course covers the theoretical framework of gene-environment interplay, which acknowledges that both genetic and environmental influences depend on one another. It also covers a breadth of readings from various fields in the social sciences, which allow sociology to be viewed with a new lens. This course presents a research field that is moving at break-neck speed following the sequencing of the human genome, leaving more questions than answers regarding how we as societies should interpret this newfound knowledge.

The course explores select classic and contemporary plays, poems, short stories, and novels by Norwegian authors. It analyzes literary texts and reflects on their intersections with gender, place, and history. Texts include folktales, an Ibsen play, novels, and other works of fiction. Through lectures and class discussions, the course develops proficiency in close reading and an understanding of the cultural contexts of literary expression.

This course gives an introduction to analytical mechanics and field theory, with an emphasis on Lagrange-Hamilton formalism and the action concept. Further, the course contains a thorough introduction to Einstein’s special relativity using four-vector formalism. This is used to give a covariant (independent of reference frame) description of mechanics and electromagnetism, including Maxwell’s equations.