Academic interests
My research is oriented towards how research objects are created and how they transfer and translate knowledge about culture between places and through time. I have worked with Actor-Network Theory and the narratological foundation it rests on, searching for the connections between ANT and narrative theory with regards to culture studies, and how it can shed light on the research objects of cultural history.
I am part of the NFR-project Bodies in Translation, and is currently researching how non-human actors are understood, and how they translate cultural historical knowledge in present day sustainability discourse.
Courses taught
- Fall 2022: KULH 1002, KULH 2007, KULH 2005
- Spring 2022: KULH 4020
- Spring 2021: KULH 4020
- Spring 2020: KULH 4020
- Fall 2018: KULH 4301
- Spring 2018: KULH 3001
Background
I have a masters degree in cultural history at UiO with the thesis Da Lucifers lenke ble Åsamøyens bånd: om endring av forståelsen av magiske kunster fra bruk til forskningsobjekt, sett gjennom en svartebok fra Jeløya (NFS M.M. 106 I) about the differing understandings of a Black book from the beginning of the 19th Century, from its authors perspective and as a folkloristic research object.
In my Phd thesis, Ein lut av det nære levande livet" : tradisjon, tradisjonselement og tradisjonsforskere : en studie av spørrelisteserien Ord og sed 1934-1947, I studied the construction of research objects meant for cultural historical research. The project was an analysis of the questionnaire series Ord og sed (Words and Custom), issued as a journal between 1934 and 1947. The questionnaires were meant to gather information on Norwegian folk tradition and the words, stories, things and practices that were seen as part of it. I have written about in what way the texts of the questionnaires relate folk tradition. I focused on how these texts constructed "objectivized" words, stories, things and practices that could become elements of a uniform "folk tradition".
I was a postdoctoral fellow on the HEI: Heritage Experience Initiative, in the working group Digital heritage. My research project focused on the use of digital tools in order to narrate, disseminate and promote heritage. The project especially explored how digital tools are used as part of Vestfold county's efforts for promoting vikings and the viking age, and how digital tools here affect the dissemination of vikings and the viking age as cultural heritage.
The aim of the project was to better understand how different groups and actors narrate cultural heritage and the opportunities digital multimedia tools gives for narrating cultural heritage in new ways. The project sought to contribute to the understanding of how cultural heritage is used in our society and how it affects our view on, and our use of, the past in the present.