Academic interests
I am interested in the relationship between knowledge, government, and texts, and has long been fascinated by documents and their manifold roles in society. I have previously studied Norwegian foreign aid (during my PhD) and ocean policy (during my postdoc), and is currently leading a research project on evaluation reports and documentation practices in the Norwegian public sector. As part of this research, I have co-written two textbooks on practice-oriented document analysis (see more below).
Coming to the study of texts in society from a background in History and STS (science and technology studies), I have in my current position a special responsibility for developing new research and teaching within the fields of governmental plain language (klarspråk) and genres of factual prose (sakprosa).
I am currently engaged in expanding the method of practice-oriented document analysis in two directions: Firstly, in the digital direction, towards digital texts and digital methods. I am curious about everything from how grand infrastructures for documentation and archiving are built and used, to the impact of technologies like ChatGPT upon how we read, write, think and interpret information. Secondly, in the practical direction, so that our academic groundwork may have more direct practical value for those working with documents on a daily basis. I will be exploring this through the UiO:Spark Innovation project DOCUPRAX.
Courses taught
I am teaching and supervising students in the BA program Klart språk and MA students following the specialisation Retorikk og språklig kommunikasjon under the Nordic studies program.
KLAR2100 – Klart språk, demokrati og rettssikkerhet
KLAR2102 – Klarspråklig metode - tekstforbedring og resultatmåling
KLAR3050 – Praksisopphold med klarspråkrapport
RETKOM4110 – Metoder i tekst- og kommunikasjonsforskning
RETKOM4160 – Nordisk sakprosa
With Kristin Asdal I am teaching an international and interdisciplinary PhD course:
TIK9015: Practice-Oriented Document Analysis
Background
During 2021-2025, I am the principal investigator of the research project «Evaluation Optics of the Nation State: The Past, Present and Future of Public Documentation» (EVALUNATION). The project builds off from my PhD on the history of foreign aid evaluation. Financing comes from the Research Council of Norway under the funding scheme FRIPRO (Young Research Talents). A key part of the EVALUNATION project and my previous work is developing an interdisciplinary method for document analysis that combines historical, rhetorical, and digital methods with practice-oriented approaches from the field of STS.
During 2016-2020, I was a postdoctoral fellow and project coordinator at the Little Tools Project, which studied the science, politics, and markets of fisheries and aquaculture in Norway and the EU, historically and today. The project was led by Kristin Asdal, hosted by the TIK Centre at UiO and financed by the European Research Council (an ERC Starting Grant). My contribution to this study was analyses of Norwegian and EU policy schemes - more specifically, policy documents - that sought to realize large-scale visions of the 'blue economy' and the 'bioeconomy'. A core part of the postdoc project was to co-write the methodology textbook Hvordan gjøre dokumentanalyse: En praksis-orientert metode (with Kristin Asdal, Cappelen Damm 2020), which we also expanded into the English version Doing document analysis: A practice oriented method (SAGE Publishing, 2022) .
My doctoral research at TIK during 2010-2015 concerned the evaluation of foreign aid, specifically how this emerged as a distinct field of expertise through a combination of social science, public accountability, development policy, and aid administration. In my thesis, I analyzed how evaluation was institutionalized within Norwegian foreign aid during 1980-1992, with special attention to how the specific methods, routines, and systems contributed to transform the field of aid at large. A key question in the dissertation was how these different methods made it possible to see the results of aid. The analysis focused upon Norwegian petroleum-related aid projects and the challenges of evaluating the effect of transferring expertise from Norway to developing countries. My Ph.D. supervisors were Kristin Asdal (TIK) and Gabrielle Hecht (then University of Michigan, now Stanford University, USA).