The Faculty of Social Science at the University of Tromsø is offering a Master’s Degree program in peace and conflict transformation (MPCT). The first students started at the program in August 2002. A new group of students has enrolled each year in August since then. The next admission is August 2006. Admission is limited to 24 seats.

The program has an international recruitment of students, with a mixture of students from Nordic and non-Nordic countries. All literature, teaching and student work will be in English.

Aims of the Program

The MPCT has a duration of two years. During the program the student shall acquire the ability to analyze, and improve their capacity to handle and propose solutions to complicated conflict formations at different levels of society. The program takes an interdisciplinary approach covering a variety of mandatory courses which student can combine with elective courses and specializations in a various fields, such as Peace and Identity, Peace and Globalization, Peace and Health, Peace and Gender, Peace and the UN, Peace Education and Nonviolence, Human Rights, in addition to courses in research methods. During the first year teaching will be intensive, with an emphasis on course work, group work, papers and oral presentations, and discussions.

The overall theme of this Master's Degree Program is the problem of violence and violence reduction. The program at Tromsø has been designed to provide the student with knowledge and training in reflection on causes and consequences of violence, of problems, circumstances and relations which may increase the possibility of violence, and exploring possibilities of violence reduction under varying circumstances. Although this gives an explicit value-direction to the course of study, the scientific requirements of explicitness about assumptions and methodology, inter-subjective verification of finds and validity of conclusions are the same as in other human and social sciences.

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