Research

My research interests are manifold and span gender and violence, migration and refugees, gender equality, men and masculinities, policy studies and a number of other topics. My current research focuses on sexual and gender-based violence against women migrants and refugees, intimate partner violence and violence in Sámi communities.

I started out in economic sociology when I was affiliated with the Project for an Alternative Future in the early 1990s; I studied alternative financial institutions (microfinance, ethical and interest-free banking) from the perspective of social movement theory and new institutional theory, resulting in my dissertation Pengene mot strømmen (Money against the stream). From the late 1990s my research focused on management and organisational change in the public sector, especially organisational and spatial flexibility.

My research on working life led me to work–family issues, men’s studies and migration research in the 2000s. I have published extensively on men, masculinities and change, drawing on sociological and social psychological perspectives on intergenerational transmission and social change, and resulting in my second dissertation Modern Men. I have also studied the relation between migration and social change, including the cultural adaptations and transnational practices among Polish migrants to Norway. Further research interests include theories of social justice, the welfare state, human rights, feminist economics, and policy studies.

Over the last years my research has focused mainly on questions of gender, violence and power. I am currently involved in an EU-funded project on sexual and gender-based violence against women migrants and refugees, a project on violence and sexual abuse in Sámi communities and a project that addresses theoretical and methodological challenges in studying violence from an intimate partner and its relation to gender, gender equality and power.

An additional, albeit small, research interest of mine since the late 1990s is the material, institutional and symbolic production and contemporary use of cultural heritage. I also have an interest in research methods.

Common themes in my research are a preoccupation with the ways in which practices are shaped by and shape contexts, the social production of knowledge, ideologies and policies, and the dynamics between knowledge production, ideologies, policies and practices.

Read more about my background.

Current projects

Publications