University of Oslo

This course focuses on the complete employee lifecycle, with a particular emphasis on personnel selection and development. The competencies of work and organizational psychologists are relevant at all stages of the employee lifecycle in the field of Human Resources. The course covers  attracting, selecting, and developing the right individuals, as well as exemplary recent developments and current issues in HR such as hybrid work and work-life policies, knowledge sharing, and artificial intelligence in HR. The course is graded on a P/NP basis only. 

This course provides a thorough introduction of the range of behaviors found in animals, and of scientific methods used to study animal behavior in the field and in the lab. It integrates knowledge from a range of fields, including ecology, evolutionary biology, physiology, and psychology. The course covers the main genetic, physiological, and developmental mechanisms underpinning individual behavior; the main historical developments leading to the current state of the field of animal behavior, including the role of the nature-nurture debate; central evolutionary theories used to explain animal behavior; and concepts and theories, such as proximate and ultimate explanations, fitness, altruism, optimality, and game theory. It develops skills in critical reading of scientific literature, ability to design experiments to study animal behavior, and making an ethogram from observing animal behavior. 

The course provides a comparative understanding of mobility and migration patterns in prehistory. It examines theoretical approaches that explore human adaptation towards changes in society related to migration or increased/decreased mobility. The course is transdisciplinarily linked to subjects like anthropology, linguistics, genetics, and geochemistry. From anthropological models, it engages the societal causes and causations of mobility and migration. Linguistics is implemented as a tool to understand connections between languages and different forms of cultural movement, and novel approaches from the natural sciences like ancient DNA and isotope analysis are explored to further contextualize physical mobility. The course also implements a practical component where the theory from the lectures is put into practice in laboratory work (in a broad sense). Scientific approaches are explored to get a source-critical perspective on how to frame and understand contact between and within cultural groups.

This course introduces a variety of central algorithms and methods essential for studies of statistical data analysis and machine learning. It is project-based and through the various projects it exposes fundamental research problems in these fields to reproduce state-of-the-art scientific results. The course provides an opportunity to develop and structure large codes for studying these systems, get acquainted with computing facilities, and learn how to handle large scientific projects. Throughout the course, good scientific and ethical conduct is emphasized.

This course  looks at a number of criminal trials, both high-profile cases and everyday proceedings, to understand how judicial proceedings have changed over a long time period while also retaining some essential structures. Through deep reading of sources from each trial as well as secondary literature, it considers how notions of "fairness," "due process," "evidence," or the "law" have evolved and how trials reflect normative expectations that are specific to and indeed highly revelatory of their respective temporal, spatial, and social contexts. The course investigates if and in what ways modern trials differ from their predecessors, how meaningful comparisons can be made, and whether or not there is a hard, systemic core to the "law" as opposed to politics, society, and culture which can be identified and studied by historians. Case studies include the trials of Jesus, Jeanne d'Arc, and the alleged witch Tempel Anneke, as well as the Stalinist show trials of the 1930s and cases from international tribunals such as those for Yugoslavia, Rwanda, and Sierra Leone. No prior legal knowledge is required.

This course examines how glaciers respond to climate changes. It provides a global perspective with emphasis on examples from polar regions. The course focuses on understanding the processes and impacts of the climate on glacier behavior.

This course gives an introduction to the Nordic social and welfare state models focusing on work, family, immigration, labor relations, economic policies, pensions, schooling, and gender equality. Theoretically, the course is informed by comparative welfare state research and political economy. It focuses on contemporary debates on the sustainability of Nordic welfare state models in the context of challenges such as the ongoing pandemic, ageing, flows of immigrants and asylum seekers, financial internationalization, climate crisis, and relations to the EU single market. The course covers the historical roots of the Nordic states and the development of their political and welfare systems in the twentieth century. Also discussed are the social conflict lines, alliances, and compromises that created the post-war context of highly organized civil societies (centralized labor unions and employers associations, strong organizations of farmers and fishermen), and how they are linked to the state in patterns of democratic corporatism. Other topics covered are: the reconciliation of work and family life in the setting of the Nordic welfare state; the policy reforms that have been agreed on in order to respond to present challenges; and the sustainability of the ambitions of gender equality and universalist welfare provisions. Reflecting on both the history and the contemporary challenges of the region, the course critically assesses various idealized accounts of Nordic peculiarities and discusses the similarities and differences between the Nordic countries with that of other European countries.

This course is an introduction to some of the central themes in environmental anthropology as well as an exploration of some recent anthropological analyses of environmental change. Drawing on a range of ethnographic studies, the course provides perspectives on topics such as: how peoples’ understanding of the environment can be related to their sense of self, identity, and moral obligation; how nature—animals, plants and landscapes—can become sites of contestation and conflict; how environments can elicit different forms of knowledge; how global inequality and colonial dispossession are connected to climate change and biodiversity loss; and how both slow and sudden environmental crises affect how we think about the future and what it means to be human.

This course offers various perspectives on how to implement inclusive education in pre-school, school, and other relevant settings. Topics include: resource-based communication and mediation; strategies for early intervention; inclusion in pre-school and school; development of individual education plans; and structuring flexible curricula. The course develops skills in educational differentiation and in planning, implementing, assessing, and revising individual learning processes in group and class relations. 

The course covers the central metabolic reaction pathways as well as (hormonal) regulation of these reaction pathways. It illustrates how organisms generate energy for essential energy-consuming processes. The metabolic reaction pathways and the regulation of these are seen in physiological connection.