Research area
Research area Maria Astrup Hjort is one of the Nordic region’s leading scholars in civil procedure, and she has been a professor since 2019. Her research covers a range of procedural issues and can broadly be said to follow four strands.
One central strand of Hjort’s research concerns the significance of technological development for procedural issues. In her doctoral thesis “Access to Evidence in Civil Cases: Especially on Digital Evidence” (2015) Hjort demonstrates how the rules of civil procedure are affected by digitalization, both in terms of what material can constitute evidence in civil cases and how courts handle that evidence under the existing rules. The rules are not necessarily adapted to digital evidence, and Hjort shows the consequences of this. Following the thesis, Hjort has published a number of articles that illuminate various problems at the intersection of technology and procedural law.
Another strand of Hjort’s research relates to her ability to connect procedural law to various substantive fields. This has resulted in several collaborative projects in which Hjort has examined the interface between civil procedure and, among others, constitutional law, EEA law, equality and anti‑discrimination law, and financial markets law.
A third strand of Hjort’s research is linked to the history of procedural rules. In several publications she has investigated the development of procedural law, particularly in the period from around 1800 to the present. In addition to showing the background to today’s rules, Hjort’s publications illuminate the intersections between today’s established fields of law, which previously were less clearly defined or not delineated at all. This is especially true of the boundaries between civil procedure and fields such as criminal procedure, administrative law, and constitutional law. Hjort has also contributed to research on legal‑historical method.
The fourth strand that characterizes Hjort’s research is her interest in comparison. Several of her publications are comparative, and Norwegian law is considered in relation to, among others, the law of the Nordic countries, English law, and German law. Many publications combine several of the research directions described above and couple comparative approaches with the other strands.
In addition to leading the faculty’s subject group for dispute resolution and courts, Hjort is affiliated with the subject group in ethics and the research group Law, Society and Historical Change.
Pedagogical work
Through her work at the Faculty of Law, Maria Astrup Hjort has worked systematically on pedagogical development. In November 2024 she was appointed a merited educator (merittert utdanner), see https://www.uio.no/om/utdanning/merittering/, and with that appointment she also became a member of the Pedagogical Academy at the University of Oslo. The prerequisites for the title of merited educator are that she has demonstrated a focus on student learning, development over time, a research‑based approach, and a collegial attitude and practice.
Hjort has carried out pedagogical work at all levels within the Faculty of Law. At the course level she initiated restructuring the civil procedure course into a standalone course with a new form of assessment and a new teaching program. The aims of the reorganization were to make the course more practice‑oriented; this included using the genres of procedural law such as procedural documents, decisions and oral pleadings, and increasing the use of oral performance in both teaching and assessment. The course was first offered in spring 2024. Hjort has also developed teaching programs for the subjects Professional Ethics and Criminal Law for Non‑Lawyers and based on extensive supervision experience she has prepared a template for supervising master’s theses.
Through the faculty’s Centre for Experiential Legal Learning (CELL), Hjort led the faculty’s initiative on advocacy and oral procedure. This involved reviewing the degree of orality in the faculty’s mandatory courses and developing two elective courses specifically focused on oral advocacy. Hjort was also involved from the start in the work on the so‑called Skills Ladder (Ferdighetsstigen), which is a comprehensive plan for how more experiential learning and practical skills training can be introduced into the law degree.
At faculty level Hjort has contributed to pedagogical work, and she played a central role in reorganizing the 4th year of study in 2023/2024. She has also worked systematically on the faculty’s electives. Through the elective course process in 2022 she led the work on electives related to the profile Conflict Management and Procedure, Dispute and Punishment. As part of this work, she reviewed and provided input on learning objectives, assessment forms and teaching for the individual electives within her subject area.
As Vice Dean for Studies, Hjort has taken several measures to raise the pedagogical standard of the faculty’s programmes. She has established a number of working groups, including on the use of commentary notes in Lovdata, the use of learning assistants in elective courses, regulation of JUROFF and continuing education courses (EVU), issues relating to AI and assessment, quality assurance of supervision and grading of master’s theses, reforming the practical training course in the Master of Laws programme, and work on the faculty’s learning environment; she has chaired several of these groups. She also took over the Skills Ladder work from CELL and has continued that effort. All of these measures have contributed to improving the pedagogical quality of the faculty’s programmes.
I 2026–2027 Hjort is the programme director for the interdisciplinary Master’s programme in Public Administration Informatics. In that capacity she is undertaking a reform to ensure the programme can admit qualified students while also securing a academically strong and societally relevant degree that preserves the programme’s legal, informatics, and social‑science perspectives.
Hjort has for many years taught civil procedure, professional ethics and legal history.
Other experience
Hjort chaired the National Archives’ committee for the preservation of digitally created records in 2022–2023 and following the committee’s report in May 2023 she gave numerous lectures across the country on the subject. The report is an important contribution to the National Archives’ work on revising criteria and methodology for preserving digitally created archives in both the public and private sectors. The committee’s input has also been important in the work on a new archives act and associated regulations.