On Monday, November 1, a new course began in the Coastal and Marine Management program. The course, Coastal and Marine Politics and Policy is taught by Auður H. Ingólfsdóttir, who has taught this course from the very beginning of the masters program in 2008.

The course gives an overview of public policy tools and how those can be applied to solve some of the issues that arise when managing coastal and marine areas. Students will analyse complex policy issues and explore the conflicts that often arise due to competing interests of various stakeholders in coastal and marine areas and the tension between short-term interests of specific groups and long-term interests of the community. The course also gives an overview of international instruments (conventions, declarations, etc.) that are relevant for coastal and marine areas and explores the interactions between international conventions, domestic legal frameworks and policies at the international, national and local level.

Auður H. Ingólfsdóttir earned her MA in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Tufts University, Boston (USA) in international relations with a specialization in Environment and Resource Policy. She has been a coordinator for a master's program in environmental studies at the University of Iceland, worked as a special advisor in the international office of the Ministry for the Environment, and as an environmental consultant. For the last two years she has worked for international missions as an expert from the Icelandic Crisis Response Unit of the Foreign Ministry. Auður's proposed doctoral dissertation will focus on the human security dimension of climate change in the Arctic, using Iceland as a case study. The research will explore the links between climate change and human security. The topic will be analyzed within the framework of IR theories, using in particular feminist theories, looking at power structures and decision making processes related to climate change policies.