MA scholarship – Eco-Emotions: Environment and Literature

Are you planning to write a MA-thesis at the intersection of emotion, environmental and literary studies during the academic year 2024/2025? The research project Eco-Emotions is awarding three MA scholarships of 15,000 NOK. The purpose of the scholarship is to encourage master students to investigate the topics mentioned above based on any type of literary/textual sources.

About the project

The main aim of the Eco-Emotions project is to discuss how humanity affectively deals with environmental change, as represented in and through literature, from the past and today, in the North and globally. The project is motivated by the relative lack of success of scientific, technological, and socio-political solutions to the current environmental crisis, which has made us aware of the pressing need for different insight, pertaining to the deeper emotive structures of humanity and the cognitive mechanisms that condition our relationship to the environment. The project aspires to harvest the yet unexploited potential of powerful, large-scale narratives from the past and today, which have the potential to activate new ways of thinking about and relating to our environment.

Who can apply:

The MA-scholarship will be awarded to students with MA-projects at the intersection of emotion, environmental and literary studies. Nonetheless, the projects are to be developed independently and should respond to the state of the art within the respective field within which the MA-student is pursuing their degree. The MA-student is to define their research questions, sources, and theoretical and methodological approaches independently, based on their own interests and preferences and in conjunction to the field’s ongoing debates and trends.

The call is open to students affiliated to any of the Departments of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, who aim to submit their thesis within 2025. The scholarship may be awarded for both 30- and 60-points MA-theses.

How to apply

To apply, send an application by email to the Eco-Emotions research group by 15 August. The application must include:

  • a short motivation letter (1 page max)
  • a project description accounting for the main research questions, sources, theories and methods (1 page max)
  • a short CV (1 page max)
  • transcripts from higher education (BA and MA-degree)

Award criteria

The main evaluation criteria are:

  • clearly formulated and original RQs within the intersection emotion-, environmental- and literary studies, a reasonable delimitation of the sources, good contextualization within the current research field, feasibility and potential.
  • Motivation letter. May be used for providing information that would not otherwise fit within a project description.

Applications will be evaluated by a committee with representatives from the research project Eco-Emotions, which will assign award letters to the successful candidates.

Scholarship procedures

The scholarship is a research scholarship and is awarded based on a successful thesis proposal and does not depend on completing the master's thesis.

The scholarships can cover living expenses and are considered taxable income for recipients. No documentation of costs is required to receive the scholarship. The scholarship will be paid in a single installment, with the awarded amount of 15,000 NOK.

Please note that research scholarships are taxable. We anticipate that the recipient will have a tax card. In the scholarship holder’s annual tax return, the scholarship will be listed as taxable income. It is the recipient’s responsibility to have a valid tax card. If the recipient does not have any tax cards or exemption cards registered with the Norwegian Tax Authorities, 50% of the scholarship will be taxed.

Successful scholarship holders will be contacted to provide personal and banking information for the grant.

Payments are scheduled for late September 2024, if all information is collected in due time.

If you have further questions about the scholarship, don’t hesitate to contact the project leader. The research advisor at the Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies may be contacted for questions regarding administrative matters. 

Published May 3, 2024 2:54 PM - Last modified May 3, 2024 3:00 PM