Faculty

Meet Per Jansson, Director of Studies

Per Jansson is the director of studies and coordinator of the master’s programme International and European Relations. He is a senior lecturer in Political Sciences, specialised in International Relations and currently researching international institutions. His particular area of interest is international arbitration from a historical perspective.

Jansson has been director of studies for this master’s programme since 2008 and it has been “challenging but also great fun,” he says. Being director of studies involves various types of work, form teaching to organising the programme and advising students. “One of the most exciting parts is that there are so many things you have to do. You deal with everything from formal things like presenting the budget and setting up course plans, to social aspects. You get into close contact with a lot of young people from all over the world and they need advice on all kinds of things. I’ve been informing students on how the Swedish health care system works, for example,” says Jansson.

Focus on international relations

The master’s programme has been running since 2001, based on the idea of combining two themes. “There are a lot of International Relations programmes out there, there are a lot of European studies or European politics or European relations programmes but we do international relations and European relations in one curriculum,” Jansson explains more about the programme.

Within the frame for this programme, Linköping University has been cooperating with three other European universities in the past few years: Aalborg University (Denmark), The Autonomous University of Barcelona (Spain) and Twente University (The Netherlands).

The cooperation between universities has been taking different forms since it started and it is still developing. What was first thought as a student mobility project, now turned into scientific cooperation as well and it can also lead to common courses in the future. “Right now we are considering how to develop this, we have been discussing organising a semester where all four universities will contribute. We are also thinking of setting up individual courses for each other.”

Opportunities

The master’s programme is suitable both for students who want to pursue an academic career and for students who want to start working in different settings soon after graduation. “From the professional point of view, I think the programme is focused more on professional settings rather than particular professional roles. Broadly we are talking about international organisations which can be governmental, non-governmental, within the voluntary sector or private businesses and alike.”

When it comes to future development, the programme will continue improving constantly. “What we need to do is not to settle down,” says Jansson. “We need to keep developing the academic content, to keep reviewing the ideas and priorities, to develop the professional skills aspect and to continue working with our cooperation partners.”

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Last updated: Fri Oct 26 16:30:06 CEST 2012