Master's Programme in Sustainability

Sustainable development for the 21st century requires knowledges, institutions and forms of action that go beyond the fragmented perspectives analysed by single academic disciplines. The purpose of the master's in sustainability is to provide the students with the knowledge, skills and competencies required for understanding, analyzing and shaping solutions to wicked problems in ways that are societally, ecologically and economically sustainable.

Using systems thinking and modelling approaches, the program will teach methods for analyzing and interacting with complex systems. The program will provide an introduction to the evolution and contents of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), and how these are embedded in legal and regulatory frameworks at local, national and international levels. It will highlight differences and similarities in the ways in which different knowledge forms (such as law, science and politics) analyze and deal with complex problems, and introduce students to real-life decision making processes involving conflicting interests, and demands and mechanisms for improved democratic participation.

The study program consists of mandatory and specialization courses, leading up to the work on the master's thesis. The specializations will take place within one of the following thematic fields:

Global societal challenges

Climate and energy transitions

Marine sustainability

The objective of the specialization is to give the student expertise in interdisciplinary approaches to dealing with Global societal challenges, Climate and energy transitions, or Marine sustainability. The general approach of all aspects of the specialization is to provide the students with in-depth knowledge of a specific sustainability topic, which uses the knowledge provided in the mandatory courses. The program is designed so that students continuously bridge between the generic course topics and the specialization: during the introductory (compulsory) courses, students should start to identify a topic of specialization, and be guided towards appropriate supervision and elective courses. The specialization begins in the first semester and continues in the 3rd and 4th semesters. The specialization typically includes a 10 ECTS course on Methods (either quantitative or qualitative) and two 10 ECTS electives from the list of appropriate electives. In addition, the specialization includes a 60 ECTS research thesis researching a subject related to the specialization, or a 30 ECTS internship plus 30 ECTS practice-oriented thesis on a topic closely related to the internship. The workload will be similar within the two models. Both models include a seminar series reiterating main topics from the mandatory courses and applying them to the thesis specialization of each student.