- International Environment and Development Studies, Noragric
My background is in international environment and development studies with a PhD on land as a human rights issue, with field research in Namaqualand South Africa. I have also researched foreign land acquisitions in Africa from a gender and human rights perspective. My main teaching experience is in global development studies, human rights and development, and gender and development. I have diverse interests in social and ecological justice and transitions to more just and less violent futures.
- Environment and development studies
- Land
- Social justice
- Human rights
- Gender and Development
- Global development
EDS245 Development and Human Rights (course plan in ResearchGate)
EDS271 Introduction to Gender and Development
EDS305 Development Theory and Politics
I particularly like to supervise related to the fields I teach, with additional keywords: justice, environment, migration, political ecology, work, degrowth.
Update: April 2024
Curriculum Vitae: Poul Wisborg
Position: Associate Professor, Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Faculty of Landscape and Society (Landsam), Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU)
E-mail: E-mail: poul.wisborg@nmbu.no
Mobile phone: +47 993 76 309
Web: https://www.nmbu.no/emp/poul.wisborg
Born: Aarhus, Denmark
Citizenship: Norway
Languages Norwegian and English
Work
2006– date Associate Professor, Noragric, NMBU
2018–2019 Visiting Scholar, Centre for Development and Environment (SUM), University of Oslo
2013 – 2017 Head of Department, Noragric, NMBU
2010 – 2012 Post-doc Researcher, IFPRI and Noragric: ‘Large land deals’ (Filed research: Ghana, Sierra Leone)
2008–2010 Coordinator, Southern African–Nordic Centre (SANORD), Cape Town
2004–2012 Project Leader and Associate Professor (from 2006), Noragric, NMBU
2001–2004 PhD Researcher, Noragric and PLAAS, Univ. of the Western Cape, South Africa
1992–2001 Project Leader, Noragric, NMBU (Travels and field research: Ethiopia, India, Pakistan, South Africa)
Education
2006 PhD in International Environment and Development Studies, Noragric NMBU
1992 MSc in Management of Natural Resources and Sustainable Agriculture (NMBU)
1990 BA in History of Ideas, Social Anthropology and Environmental Management, University of Oslo; and Cultural History, University of Aberdeen
Courses
2018 Leadership of research and PhD projects, Norwegian University of Life Sciences
2018 University Pedagogy (PPUN400), Norwegian University of Life Sciences
2013 Leadership development programme (‘Dekan-skolen’), The Norwegian Association of Higher Education Institutions
Fellowships and mobility
2018–2019. Visiting Research Fellow, Centre for Development and Environment (SUM), University of Oslo
2010–2012. Post-doctoral research scholarship funded by Research Council of Norway (NFR). Stay abroad:International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI), Washington DC, USA (14 months)
2001–2004. PhD Scholarship funded by Research Council of Norway (NFR). Stays abroad: Programme for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies (PLAAS), the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa (16 months). Land Tenure Center, University of Wisconsin, Madison (three months, 2003)
Responsibilities in education
2022–2025 Programme Leader, Master in Global Development Studies
2020, -21, -24 Course Leader, EDS271 Introduction to Gender and Development Studies
2022, –23, –25 Course Leader, EDS245 Human Rights and Development
2019–24 Co-responsible for EDS305 Development Theory and Politics, Block on ‘Development as Freedom?’ and evaluation
2018 Course Leader Bachelor Thesis Course
2013–present Lecturer on various courses including: EDS 285 Global Food Systems and Food Security; EDS245 Human Rights and Development; EDS370 Gender and Development, EDS102 Introduction to Development Thinking
2005–2009 Course Leader, EDS305 Development Theory and Policy
Supervision
Supervision that is ongoing or has led to approved theses. All submitted to Department of International Environment and Development Studies (Noragric), Faculty of Landscape and Society, Norwegian University of Life Sciences (NMBU).
PhD
- Gondyi, Nengak Daniel. Land dispossession and violent conflict in northeast Nigeria. (Tor Arve Benjaminsen (main), Poul Wisborg (co-supervisor), Kjetil Fred Hansen, University of Stavanger (co-supervisor). (from 2024, ongoing).
- Zikargie, Yidneckachew Ayele. 2023. Modernist sugar industry development in pastoral frontiers: redefining land and livelihood rights in the Omo Valley, Ethiopia. PhD Thesis 2023: 42.
- Tarjem, Ida Arff. 2022. Towards feminist crops: A feminist technoscience study of gender-responsive and transformative crop breeding. PhD Thesis 2022:33.
Master
- Kerll, Liana. 2023. Towards a redesign of the fashion and textile industry? Corporate perspectives on the EU Strategy for Sustainable and Circular Textiles. Master Thesis in International Environmental Studies
- Olsen, Sofie. 2022. Feminist perspectives on immigration and (re)production of power: a critical discourse analysis of Norwegian immigration and integration policy 2005–2021. Master Thesis in Global Development Studies
- Soita, Mellab Mkeli. 2022. Identifying climate change frames within East African settings of displacement. Master Thesis in International Relations
- Hessen, Katharina Karlsen. 2022. A coastline altered by aquaculture: the sociocultural sustainability of fish farming in Arctic Norway. Master Thesis in International Environmental Studies
- Strøm, J. 2022. The impacts of COVID-19 and the syndemics of epidemics on education and health on adolescent girls in Malawi. Master Thesis in Global Development Studies
- Farhi, A. M. (2022). Towards a cosmopolitan theory of modernity: a comparative historical analysis of emerging Buddhist, Islamic and Post-Christian modernities. Master Thesis in International Relations
- Asante, Prince. 2021. School abductions in Chibok and Zamfara, Nigeria: the nexus between gender, terror and official responses. Master Thesis in International Relations
- Nguyen, Trang Thien. 2021. The power of state media and human rights to land: an analysis of media content on large-scale land acquisitions in Vietnam. Master Thesis in Global Development Studies
- Ross, Heidi Margrethe. 2021. From racist violence to re-humanization, mattering, and nonviolence: an analysis of the normative reasoning, communication, and resonance of Black Lives Matter in the wake of the death of George Floyd. Master Thesis in International Relations
- Olsen, Vero Brokke. 2020. Unmuting conversations in global development. Master Thesis in Global Development Studies
- Strand, Mathilde Moe. 2020. Masculinities and sexualities matter! A secondary study of demographic change in Japan. Master Thesis in Global Development Studies
- Ali, Amna. 2020. Civil society contributions to the integration of refugees in Norway: a case study of the Norwegian Red Cross Refugee Guide Program in Bærum Municipality. Master Thesis in Global Development Studies
- Abdelrahman, Yousif Badawi. 2019. The Politics of Land Acquisition in Sudan: The case of El-Gerief East, Khartoum. Master Thesis in Global Development Studies
- Antwi, Samuel Owusu. 2018. Farmer–herder conflict and food security in Kwahu East District, Eastern Region, Ghana. Master Thesis in International Development Studies
- Schmidt, Henning Berg. 2018. The non-coercive road to serfdom: Friedrich Hayek’s theory of distributive justice in the context of causal determinism. Master Thesis in International Development Studies
Bachelor
- Stoveland, Karoline. 2024 (ongoing). The political ecology of wind: Environmental justice and wind turbine construction in Fosen, Norway. Bachelor Thesis in International Environment and Development Studies
- Hånde, Éléonore Celine. 2023. Development studies beyond its colonial legacy: What lessons does history hold? Bachelor Thesis in International Environment and Development Studies
- D’Aubyn, Kiana. 2020. China’s One Child Policy. Bachelor Thesis in International Environment and Development Studies
- Van Lammeren, Ilja Maria. 2018. The agrarian question at a crossroads? The financialization of farmland in the United States: The case of Farmland Partners Real Estate Investment Trust. Bachelor Thesis in International Environment and Development Studies
Various memberships and roles
2011–date Member, International Association of Feminist Economics
1995–2016 Member, International Association for the Study of the Commons (IASC)
2015–2018 Board member, Network for University Cooperation Tibet–Norway
2014–2016 Member, Gender Equality Committee, NMBU
2013–2016 Chair, Department Board, Noragric, NMBU.
2010–date Reviewer for: Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics; Forum for Development Studies, International Area Studies Review; Political Geography; Urban Planning; Palgrave MacMillan; Springer Nature.
2021–23 External examiner: GLODE300/301 Critical Approaches to Development, University of Bergen.
2023 Chair, PhD Evaluation Committee. Ospina, Erika Julieta Rojas. “There is no safe place”. Narratives of everyday gendered in/security at the margins in El Salvador. PhD Thesis 2023:31, NMBU
2017 Chair PhD Evaluation Committee. Borchgrevink, K. C. A. (2017). With faith in development: Islamic charity as development in practice : perspectives from Pakistan and the Pakistani diaspora. PhD Thesis 2017:41, NMBU
Publications
Wisborg, Poul. (2024, forthcoming). Book Review: Human Rights and Development by Peris S. Jones, Routledge, 2024. Accepted by Nordic Journal of Human Rights
Tarjem, Ida Arff; Westengen, Ola Tveitereid; Wisborg, Poul and Glaab, Katharina. 2023. “Whose demand?” The co-construction of markets, demand and gender in development-oriented crop breeding. Agriculture and Human Values, 40(1), 83–100. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10460-022-10337-y
Ango, Tola Gemachu; Börjeson, Lowe; Wisborg, Poul; Senbeta, Feyera; and Alem, Habtemu. 2022. Coffee, child labour, and education: Examining a triple social–ecological trade-off in an Afromontane forest landscape. International Journal of Educational Development, 95 (September). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijedudev.2022.102681
Wisborg, Poul and Aksel Tømte. 2017. Not free for the taking: A human rights approach to transnational land acquisitions. NCHR Occasional Papers Series No 8: Investments and land rights: The role of the private sector in ensuring responsible governance of tenure. Oslo. (8–20)
Wisborg, Poul. 2013. Transnational Land Deals and Gender Equality: Utilitarian and Human Rights Approaches. Feminist Economics, (January 2014), 1–28. http://doi.org/10.1080/13545701.2013.862341
Wisborg, Poul. 2013. Human Rights Against Land Grabbing? A Reflection on Norms, Policies, and Power. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics. http://doi.org/10.1007/s10806-013-9449-8
Wisborg, Poul. 2013. Farms as camps: displaced Zimbabweans on commercial farms in Limpopo Province, South Africa. In In the shadow of a conflict: Crisis in Zimbabwe and its effects in Mozambique, South Africa and Zambia, eds. Bill Derman and Randi Kaarhus. Harare: Weaver Press.
Hall, Ruth, Poul Wisborg, Shirhami Shirinda and Phillan Zamchiya. 2013. Farm workers and farm dwellers in Limpopo province, South Africa.' Journal of Agrarian Change, Vol 13, No 1 (Special issue on Southern Africa).
Wisborg, Poul. 2011. The primacy of freedom: development as human emancipation. In The political economy of environment and development in a globalised world: exploring the frontier, eds. Darley Jose Kjosavik and Pål Vedeld. Trondheim: Tapir Academic Publishers.
Wisborg, P. (2011). Book review. “Development Ethics”: An anthology of seminal articles and chapters by Des Gasper and Asuncion Lera St . Clair (eds.) 2010. Forum for Development Studies, 38(1), 125–127. https://doi.org/10.1080/08039410.2011.531900
Wisborg, Poul. 2007. Land tenure reform in a Namaqualand rural area, South Africa: Contesting Komaggas. In conflicts over land and water in Africa. Eds. Derman, Bill, Rie Odgaard and Espen Sjaastad. Oxford: James Currey. 116–137
Wisborg, Poul. 2006. 'It is our land': Human rights and land tenure reform in Namaqualand, South Africa. PhD Thesis. Ås: Norwegian University of Life Sciences.
Benjaminsen, Tor A., Rick Rohde, Espen Sjaastad, Poul Wisborg, and Tom Lebert. 2006. Land reform, range ecology and carrying capacities in Namaqualand, South Africa. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, Vol. 96, no. 3: 524–540
Wisborg, Poul. 2005. 'Certain rural areas': Constructing and re-constructing an apartheid landscape in Namaqualand, South Africa, in Landscape, law and justice, eds. Peil, Tiina and Michael Jones. Oslo: Novus, p. 304–314
Opinion, debate, recent minor pieces
Wisborg, Poul. 2022. Tuition fee for non-European students in Norway: Unfair and a threat to education quality, POLLEN, accessed at: https://politicalecology.space/tuition-fee-norway/
Wisborg, Poul. 2022. “Yes to education, No to segregation”, Khrono, 18.11.2022, accessed at https://khrono.no/yes-to-education-no-to-segregation/735134
Wisborg, Poul. 2022. Nei til studieavgift for ikke-europeiske studenter, Universitas 28.11.2022, accessed at: https://www.universitas.no/gratisprinsippet-internasjonale-studenter-internasjonalt-samarbeid/nei-til-studieavgift-for-ikke-europeiske-studenter/360986
Wisborg, Poul. 2022. Ekskluderingen av ikke-europeiske studenter viser regjeringens grenseløse smålighet», Transit Magasin, 3.12.2022, accessed at: https://www.transitmag.no/2022/12/03/ekskluderingen-av-ikke-europeiske-studenter-viser-regjeringens-grenselose-smalighet/