The Centre for Development and the Environment, Senter for Utvikling og Miljø (SUM), is primarily a research institution. It was established by the University of Oslo in 1990 in response to the report of the Brundtland Commission: Our Common Future. Research at the centre is especially concerned with comparative analysis, over time and space, and with different levels - the global, regional and local - and interactions between these.
The Department of Social Anthropology is currently one of the largest in Europe and consists of 15 permanent members of staff, in addition to part-time lecturers and research fellows, giving the department field experience from all continents. The Department has developed considerable expertise on Latin America and Southeast Asia. However, the staff members have conducted fieldwork in major parts of the world, including various parts of Africa, the Middle East, the Arctic region, South Asia, Japan and Norway. The Ethnographic Museum, part of the University Museum of Cultural Heritage, also has a staff of anthropologists.
Research within the area of development and the environment is also carried out at the Department of Sociology and Human Geography. Human Geography covers subjects such as economic geography, political geography, development geography, and urban geography.
At the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences, several departments are engaged in research related to development and the environment, such as the departments of Geology, Biology, and Chemistry. For details, please see the Mathematics and Natural Sciences page.
The University of Oslo seeks to be an active partner in the international academic community, stimulating academic environments to quality and cooperation in research and education. A focal point of the university's internationalisation strategy is continuation and expansion of our collaboration with universities in the South, the goal being mutual competence building and strengthened research capacity at our partner institutions. For details regarding the University's cooperation with countries in the South, please visit the North-South Catalogue.
The presentation on these pages does not give a complete overview of all research at the University of Oslo. For more information about research within development and the environment, please follow the links below, which includes some of the most relevant units within this area.
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