B15-DS Bachelor's Thesis

The bachelor thesis is written in the third year of the bachelor programme in International Environment and Development Studies, and is meant to give the students an introduction to academic literature and research and is based on independent work with theory and various secondary sources. There is no requirement (it is not recommended) to base the bachelor thesis on self-collected primary data.

The thesis must follow norms in academic writing for structure, style and use and citation of sources. The thesis must be between 7 000 and 10 000 words including in-text citations but excluding thesis summary, table of contents, reference list and any appendices.

Thesis registration and submission deadlines

• Before the autumn/spring semester (25 August / 8 January), students who intend to write the bachelor thesis must submit a tentative thesis topic/title to the course responsible. The topic or title will be used for allocating the student to a supervisor.
• The student and supervisor must sign NMBU's thesis contract and submit to course responsible for thesis registration (15 September / 1 February).
• The student must apply for admission to the course (B15-DS) in Studentweb (15 September / 1 February).
• The deadline for submitting the thesis is 15 December / 15 May.

Knowledge:

The student is able to describe/explain

• a research problem relevant to International Environment and Development Studies
• a theoretical or conceptual framework
• a relevant case or theme for investigation

Skills:

The student is able to

• work independently with a longer academic text
• identify a relevant issue/topic
• find relevant literature, theory and empirical cases
• critically analyze topic and empirical cases and present the findings
• follow norms for scientific writing

General competence:

The student can work independently to produce a major analytical text adhering to norms for scientific writing.