Profile
I am Professor in Political Communication and Journalism at the University of Oslo, Norway. I have been researching, teaching and supervising students for 20 years.
I am broadly interested in the role of the media and communication in society and politics. Although, over the years, I have worked on a variety of topics—from international journalism and foreign correspondence, public diplomacy, the role of the media in terrorism, radicalization and conflict, to the construction of silence around infertility—I have always been driven by the same questions: How do we explain the mediated world we live in? How do we know what we know?
I am committed to making a positive difference to the world we live in through my research, teaching, and public engagement. Beyond Western paradigms, I let myself be inspired by systemic, indigenous, and postcolonial approaches to knowledge. My aim is to provide students with the creative, regenerative mindsets we need to deal with the social and ecological challenges we currently face.
Beyond academia, I am a psychotherapist specialized in trauma. The understanding of the way adverse life experiences affect, over time, the mind, the body and our communities (even across generations) further informs my research and teaching.
Current projects
At the moment I am working on the following projects:
- The “blackspots” of journalism: how the voices of minorities get muzzled and silenced; how racism is subtly produced and reproduced in Norwegian media; which practical measures in the newsroom can contribute to greater inclusion.
- More-than-human perspectives in political communication. I am investigating the way foreign species are represented in Norwegian media. I am approaching animals and plants as political actors and citizens of a more-than-human biotic polity and exploring how the boundaries of their inclusion/exclusion are negotiated.
- Researching lived experience. I am working on the manuscript of my new book The trauma of infertility: The experience of involuntary childlessness.
Academic interests
- Political communication
- Media and politics
- Journalism
- Media and conflict
- Media, (in)fertility, and involuntary childlessness
- More-than-human approaches
- Indigenous, post-colonial, non-Western-centric epistemologies
- Qualitative methodologies: content analysis; interviews; ethnography; creative methods