one of lifes big questions: what should you do for your master thesis?

As most Nordic students, we are on facebook, and my cycle has its own facebookgroup aswell, which is great for sharing ideas and asking questions. Often the questions would be something like this: "Did anyone understand what to do for this weeks assignment?" "When is the deadline for chosing free or fixed exam?" "How many assignments might we miss?" "Where are people planning to stay for the Oslo seminar?"
This semester most of us are writing our thesis, and the facebookgroup is not so actively used anymore. But about a month ago (or maybe more, my memory is bad) I asked people to tell me what their thesis project is about, cause I was thinking it might be of interest to other people then supervisors and your computers document folder.

Here are some projects (copypasted directly from facebookgroup) :

-  My thesis working title is at the moment "The Angel of the Lord as a destructive and menacing angel in the Hebrew Bible". The main point is to view the ambiguous figure of "malak Yahweh" as a distinctive being from God concentrating on the passages where this figure functions as a "angel of destruction"

-  working title: Islamophobia Online?Study Case of a YouTube Video
and the outline (copypaste from the TC): In this thesis paper I examine a contemporary YouTube video, which presents an anti-Islam stance. In my opinion, this video can be seen as a part of a phenomenon of an "intellectual" anti-Islamic notion. While criticism is an important part of modern society , this video and similar Online videos and texts can be seen as crossing a border line between legitimate criticism and promoting Islamophobia.

-the Image of Eve in Judaism, Christianity and Islam". I will look at texts from Hebrew Bible, Apocrypha, Pseudepigrapha, New Testament and Quran and analyze them with the regard of two main topics connected with Eve: her creation and the fall

-the title is "Saint Ephrem the Syrian on Eschatology in the Hymns on Paradise". i just focus on 15 poems of ST. Ephrem, and explore his thoughts of Eschatology. the Fall of Adam and Eve, the salvation of Christ, the finial judgement, Ephrem's ascetic thought, ect. would be considered.

-I'm focusing on Book 11 of Augustine's Confessions, where he expounds his theory of time, and I'll be looking at whether or not he can be said to be writing as a mystic there. I might take up parts of Book 9 as well where he has a famous mystical experience in Ostia.


In addition to this, I know that we have people working with Atonement in the Dead Sea Scrolls/ community, Eco-theology, The Attitude Towards Armed Warfare in the Early Christian Church,
how martyrdom and persecution influenced the Christian self-understanding, Christian theologians of Arab background, topics related to gender and religion...

well, you get the picture. people are working with a lot of different and cool stuff. If you are reading this blog, working at a Nordic or other university and thinking: this person sounds perfect for our newly planned project about..., then dont hesitate! Contact us and we will put you in contact with the person working with the project you are interested in (if the person agrees to of course). Or maybe you just think it interesting to read one or more of the thesis, again, please tell us.

religiousroots@gmail.com is where to find us :)


-Hilde