Peace and Conflict Transformation (Peacestudies) – (M.Phil.)

Contents

The Master's degree programme offers insights into the nature and causes of conflicts, practical skills for handling conflicts by peaceful means and peace-building processes.

While traditional peace research focuses on violence and its consequences, the MPCT programme takes a different perspective. It emphasises non-violent conflict handling and explores possibilities for reducing violence. The geographical position of Tromsø in the relatively peaceful Far North provides students with a unique context to study peace. This is a region with a history of peaceful co-existence of diverse ethnic and cultural identities. Non-violent handling of conflict has been an important experience in the region throughout its history. Both the perspective and outlook of the master's programme is clearly global: it actively recruits students from all over the world, creating an environment for cross-cultural teaching and learning experiences.

During the first year, the teaching is intensive. The theoretical and methodological dimensions of the programme, such as conflict, violence, conflict management and peace, are addressed through the compulsory courses. The second year focuses mainly on students' independent projects. Such projects are designed by students depending on their interests. It is possible to do fieldwork up to three months to support these individual projects.

Learning outcomes

The MPCT is designed to provide students with in-depth knowledge of peace and conflict studies as a distinct and an applied field of study, in addition to developing general academic capabilities.

Students, who have successfully completed the MPCT programme, are expected to have achieved the following:

Knowledge and analytical understandings:

* History and evolution of peace and conflict studies as a field of study - nature of cross-disciplinarity, and the interconnections between peace and conflict, peace and violence, peace and war, positive and negative peace, and normative and positive knowledge
* Nature and causes of violent conflicts at all levels of human interaction (inter-personal, group, community and international). Topics covered range from poverty, social exclusion and gangsterism, organised crime, forced migration, terrorism, resource management, rebel financing, environmental change to energy security
* Major concepts underlying contemporary debates such as realism, liberalism, critical theory, justwar traditions, state-building, structural and cultural violence, gender and ethnicity, human rights, humanitarianism and international law
* Measures designed to avoid or reduce violence (negative peace) and enhance the capacity for conflict transformation (positive peace). Topics covered include peace education, democratisation, restorative justice and truth commissions, disarmament, demobilisation and re-integration of refugees and insurgent groups, post-war reconstruction and development, UN and peace operations.

Skills and competences

The MPCT programme enables students to

* Relate theoretical and methodological frameworks from a variety of disciplines to violent conflicts and peace-building processes
* Develop their peace-building skills through role plays, team work and communication
* Design and carry out a research project that involves the use of diverse data sources
* Take responsibility for one's own learning by working independently towards realisation of the objectives of a degree programme

Teaching and assessment methods

The teaching and learning methods will be problem-based, as far as possible: Using problems and issues informing everyday life as a starting point, the teaching will be organized as recurrent cycles of instructions, readings, seminars, discussions and academic production under the guidance of an academic staff. The teaching methods will be worldly, grounded and driven by field knowledge and thereby facilitate the problem-solving capabilities of students.

All students will be appointed an academic adviser in the first year of study. The supervision will be given through seminars and individual tutorials.

The type of examination is specified in each module. Evaluation is based on the grading system, A-E, F = fail.

Programme evaluation

The programme is evaluated annually. Courses informing the programme will be evaluated at least once during the two-year programme period. Such evaluations will involve inputs from students and lecturers.