2009

Does original literature really exist? And if not, what is actually plagiarism? These are among the issues that Wladimir Chavez deals with in his PhD research. From his desk in Halden, the young Ecuadorian researcher is stepping in to a literary minefield as he revises former evaluations and accusations of plagiarism among some of the history’s greatest Hispanic writers and poets. Chávez has developed his own methodology of text comparison, in order to clarify inconsistencies in use of literary terminology related to plagiarism, among colleagues.

A large collaborative research project aimed at improving the forage value of degraded pastures in Central America is now coming to an end. But the research continues, due to the project’s interesting findings and methodology.

With the appointment of Carlos Cabanillas as Associate Professor, the establishment of Spanish studies and the introduction of a new research project on cultural transfers in Latin American literature, the University of Tromsø is emerging as a new hub for research on Latin American culture and literature in Norway.

Ole Kristian Våge started on his PhD research project Harvesting the blue field: Norwegian and Spanish terminology in aquaculture within the discipline of Terminology approximately 2 years ago. Next to some teaching at the NHH, he is still working on his monograph, which in itself seems quite interdisciplinary, as may easily be associated with problem approaches from the social sciences.

Himself both a researcher and a screenwriter, José Andrés Fonseca Hidalgo at the University of Bergen has just finished his doctoral thesis on narrative tendencies in Latin American films, with samples from Colombia and his homeland Costa Rica.

As a part of the extensive international research project Flammable Societies, the social anthropologist Iselin Åsedotter Strønen is doing field work for her doctoral thesis in low income urban areas, called barrios, in Venezuela.

Elin Cecilie Ranum's research on youth gangs, the socalled "maras", in Central America shows that the way the state apparatus has handled the gang problem has led to an increase in violence and negative consequences for the trust in state institutions and support for democracy.

In his PhD research Håvard Haarstad shows that not even Evo Morales has been able to counter the negative effect of global economic forces on the influence of labor unions.

By supporting the work of building competence at the local level, the Norwegian Geotechnical Institute contributes to reducing the degree of damage caused by landslides in Central America.

In his doctoral thesis in anthropology, Christian Sørhaug explains why the swamp dwelling Warao Indians pick up a bicycle at a large city garbage dump and use the funds from Chavez' missions to buy DVD players.