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Nordic NIAS Council Conference

20-22 November in Oslo, Norway

The 10th Annual Nordic NIAS Council Conference entitled: "Environmental Asia"will be held 20-22 November 2017 in Oslo, Norway. The conference is jointly organized by the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages at Oslo University and the Nordic Institute for Asian Studies (NIAS). The conference will be combined with a PhD course 23-24 November. Deadline for submitting abstract is 15 August.

The aim of this conference is to facilitate critical discussions about Asia’s environmental pathways. What interests are at stake in current environmental policies, and who represents them? How will Asian societies deal with the double-bind of economic development and environmental protection? What roles do Asian religions and philosophies play in environmental debates? How have people reacted to and coped with major environmental changes in the past, and how do they anticipate the future? By exploring these questions, the conference aspires to promote a deeper understanding of environmental change in Asia.

The conference invite proposals for panels, roundtables or individual papers on these and related topics. Proposals should approach processes of environmental change in Asia from the perspective of the humanities or social sciences, including interdisciplinary ones that also integrate insights from the natural sciences. Participants in the PhD course (that follows immediately after the conference) are expected to also take part in the conference (with or without paper presentation). 

PhD Course – Working with Environmental Asia

The conference will be combined with a PhD course where doctoral candidates will present and discuss their research projects with senior researchers as well as with fellow doctoral candidates.

This PhD course will focus on the methodology when working with Environmental Asia. Taking the questions, problems, dilemmas and decisions of the individual research project as the point of departure the focus will be on how to work with sources, how to do fieldwork, how to integrate theory and how to organize a thesis. 

The course can be taken as a 7.5 ECTS credit course (to be approved by the individual student’s home university/institution). To receive the credits, doctoral students must attend the conference on November 20-22, the PhD course on November 23-24, submit and present a paper (10-12 pages) which draws on the course readings, and give comments to a fellow PhD student’s paper. 

Doctoral candidates are also encouraged to present a paper at the main conference. This paper may not be similar to the methodology paper prepared for the PhD course. Students wishing to present a paper at the conference and to attend the PhD course must submit two abstracts.

Deadline for submitting abstract is 15 August. 

More information.