The Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages (IKOS) at University of Oslo has signed an agreement on formal collaboration with the College of Liberal Arts at University of Austin in Texas, USA. This collaboration aims at intensifying and expanding the already well established connections between IKOS and Austin, and will be launched from the fall semester 2014. It encompasses teaching (co-teaching, faculty exchange, developing remote teaching through video conferencing and internet courses etc., developing co-taught courses, developing common programmes and degrees, student mobility), student supervision (co-supervision of MA and PhD students), and research (establishing specialized and broad interdisciplinary research projects that include graduate students). The collaboration includes South Asian Studies, but also many other disciplines  such as Chinese studies, Japanese studies, Cultural Studies and History, and Religious studies.

There will be a special focus on education and opening up new possibilities for students through increased student mobility, the active involvement of students in the activities and decision making processes, and by involving them actively in the research projects. This will be done on both the MA and on the PhD level, combining the two sets of students, which then corresponds to the American idea of ”graduate studies”. Applications should be delivered before 15  February and 15 September for the coming semester respectively. More information about the Oslo-Austin collaboration.