News

The academic year of 2016/2017 is just about to come to an end, and CAS is looking forward to the next. In August, we will welcome three new research groups working on computational linguistics, molecular chemistry, and the Nordic “civil wars”. No doubt next year’s groups will be as versatile as their predecessors.

In autumn 1944, Norddal, in the north of Troms County, was occupied by German army forces in retreat. They had brought with them an unknown number of Soviet prisoners, who were distributed among four prisoner-of-war (POW) camps. When the war ended, the camps were abandoned and their stories almost lost in time.

Karen Thornber argues that humanities can help improve human health and in particular can alert us to the need to tackle persistent stigmas against diseases.

April 6 2017 writer and scholar Robert Macfarlane gave the talk Deep Time, Thin Place And Thick Speech in the Anthropocene at Litteraturhuset in Oslo.

Their mathematics is already used outside the mathematical sphere, from calculating an asteroid’s position to measuring the size of an iceberg, but Berit Stensønes believes it is only the beginning of the developments and applications of these powerful tools.

We are Generation Anthropocene, according to Robert Macfarlane, who argues that our need for change seems to greatly exceed our capacity to make it happen.

Our second lunch-time seminar this semester was given by Associate Professor Bryan Tilt, who shared his research on perceptions of air pollution in rural and urban areas in China: – There is little research on whether one needs to have reached a certain economic level in order to worry about environmental issues.

Former CAS group leader Professor Trond Helge Torsvik has been awarded this prestigious prize for his outstanding work in geophysics.

In our first lunch-time seminar this spring, Professor Saphinaz-Amal Naguib took us to Vardø, Norway’s most north-easterly city, near the border with Russia. She introduced us to a rich street art scene that depicts the large-scale depopulation of this arctic city.

CAS congratulates former CAS group leader, future group leader 2017/2018 and CAS board alternate who will lead two different Norwegian Centres of Excellence (SFF).