Academic Interests
The cultural history of Northern Europe 1500-1900, with the focus on the following themes: Church and religion, nobility and manors, Pietism and Enlightenment, popular movements and religious revivals, museums and museum history, regional and local history.
Higher education and employment history
Born 1955. BA in folklore studies 1978. MA in theology 1979. Research fellow in church history 1980-1981. Research fellow Norwegian Research Council 1982-1985. Research archivist 1985-1987. Dr.philos. at the University of Oslo 1987. Senior curator and head of Dept. of archives and regional history at Borgarsyssel Museum, Sarpsborg, 1987-1994. Associate Professor of folklore studies, University of Oslo, 1995. Professor of folklore studies 1996. Professor of cultural history 2003.
Honoraria
Price award from The Royal Gustavus Adolphus Society, Uppsala, for outstanding research in cultural history 1993
Appointments
- Dean of the Faculty of Humanities, University of Oslo, 2015-2018
- Head of the Department of Culture Studies and Oriental Languages, University of Oslo, 2007-2014
-Board member/Deputy chair of The Institute for Comparative Research in Human Culture, Oslo, 2007-2010, chair since 2010
-Member of working groups on Popular Religiosity and on the Ritual Year within the SIEF (Société Internationale d'Etnologie et de Folklore)
-Editor-in-chief of Arv. Nordic Yearbook of Folklore since 2003
-Elected member of Kungliga Gustav Adolfs Akademien/The Royal Gustavus Adolphus Society, Uppsala, 2002
-Elected member of Societas Scientarum Fennica/Finska Vetenskapssamfundet, Helsingfors, 2004
-Elected member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters, Oslo, 2016
Cooperation
Partners in the project EuNaMus
- The Department of Culture Studies (Tema Q), Linköping University
- School of Museum Studies, University of Leicester
- Department of Cultural Technology and Communication, University of the Aegean
- The Department of Art and Archaeology, Université Paris 1 Panthéon Sorbonne
- The Research Centre of Culture and communication, University of Tartu
- The Department for Historical Disciplines, University of Bologna
- Department of History, Central European University (Kozep-Europai Egyetem), Budapest
CV