Centre for Gender Studies

Attachment, migration and biopolitics

LOVA is a collective research project funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (2016-2022). Since the early 2000s successive Danish governments have imposed some of the strictest immigration laws in Europe, and the LOVA project aims to qualify understandings of how and to what effect different forms of migration are conceptually and politically governed in a Danish context.

LOVA inve­sti­gates, in particular, the ways in which the psy­cho­logical and juridical concepts of attachment are utilized to regulate types of migration com­monly understood as involving relationships of love: i.e. family reunification, trans­natio­nal adoption, and trans­national migration marriages. In eve­ry­day use, the develop­mental psycho­logical concept of attachment (‘tilknyt­ning’) denotes an indivi­du­al’s capacity to form social bonds. From 2002-2018 the so-called attachment requirement was part of Danish migration legi­sla­­tion, and during the same period a growing interest in attachment as psychological framework took hold within the field of transnational adoption.

The primary research question for LOVA is: How and to what effect has the concept of attach­ment been operationalized to regulate different forms of love migration in a Danish context from 2000-2020? LOVA is structured around four individual and two collaborative, interdisciplinary projects, which analyse different forms of empirical material including legal documents, media discourse and representations, policy, and educational material.

LOVA offers a) a locally situated contribution to the rapidly growing international field of affect (emotion) scholarship and b) analytical methods for theorizing love and attachment as specific technologies of power utilized to regulate the political field of migration.

Project participants: Mons Bissenbakker (PI), Lene Myong, Asta Smedegaard Nielsen and Sofie Jeholm.

Keywords: gender studies, migration regulation, attachment, family reunification, affect, biopolitics, love, transnational adoption

Read more about the LOVA project here: https://koensforskning.ku.dk/forskning/lova/

Funding: The Danish Council for Independent Research. 2017-2022

Women’s participation and gendered politics in the Scandinavian queer (lgbt+) movements

Beyond equality is a sub-project in the NordiQueer research project, funded by the Swedish Research Council for four years (2019-2022). The project examines the history of women’s participation and gendered politics in the Scandinavian queer (lgbt+) movements, with particular focus on the fifteen-year period between 1978 and 1993, and in the context of national and Nordic equality and welfare politics.

Beyond Equality applies an ethnographic and microhistorical focus on particular case studies: the Lesbebussen campaign in 1988, the Pink Rebels activist group that was active ca 1988-1992, and activist debates and strategies related to family and sexual politics pre-Partnerskapsloven era (1993).

Central questions include: What collective identities did women adopt, and at which times? When and why were commonalities and/or differences emphasized in these identity projects? What forms of collective organizing did they establish, and what were their aims? How did women relate to other forms of activism, including mixed-gender organizing within and beyond the queer community? What differences and similarities can we find throughout the Scandinavian region, and in which transnational circuits of political struggle and cultural politics did they partake?

In engaging archival materials and conducting fieldwork and oral history interviews, Beyond Equality is inspired by scholarship in queer anthropology, feminist ethnography and gender theory to carefully map and analyze the complicated challenges and circumstances that have shaped Scandinavian queer organizing hitherto. A central ambition is to add to the relative lack of research on non-conventional gendered lives and movements during the 1970s and 1980s in Norway compared with the international research front, and to develop a critical study of collective activism in the quest for liberation and justice in what is widely recognized as one of the world’s most egalitarian regions. A further ambition is, based in the principal focus on peripherally situated activists whose politics aligned more with solidarity than separatist identitarian ideologies, to envision new ways to engage in justice activism and connect beyond borders and into the future.

Affiliated researchers:

Project leader: Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen  

Research assistant: Erika Eidslott

Funding: The Swedish Research Council. 2019-2022

How can increased use of technology in care practices become more ethically sound?

Professor Ellen Ramvi (Faculty of Health Sciences, UiS) heads the project, which is funded by the HELSEVEL-program with the Norwegian Research Council. Through trans-disciplinary collaborative practices, the project aims to develop a care ethics paradigm to inform and ensure quality of care in caring futures.

Innovation, increased efficiency, and development and use of new technology are often presented as solutions to new demands in care and welfare practices. However, the evidence on ethical implications of technological innovation in current technology-mediated care practices is scarce. QUALITECH therefore revisits care ethics in practice- and experience-near contexts, at a time of changing health, care and welfare policies, services and practices. Our principal research question is: how can technology-mediated care practices become care-ethically sound – and, correspondingly, how can care ethics become more technology-aware? The project safeguards that increasing use of new technology in care corresponds with quality in care for users and professionals, and its implications for practice, policy and education.

The project consists of five work-packages:

1. Digital assessment templates in the child welfare services (WP Lead Åse Vagli, Institute for social work, Faculty of Social Sciences, UiS)
2. Professionals’ ideals and sense of self in technology-mediated care practices (WP Lead Birgitta Haga Gripsrud, department of care and ethics, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiS)
3. The impact of robots and other caregiving techno-bodies on agency and quality of care (WP Lead Ingvil Hellstrand, Centre for Gender Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, UiS)
4. Management, design and implementation of technology in care practices (WP Lead Brita Gjerstad, Institute for social work, Faculty of Social Sciences, UiS)
5. Caring futures (WP Lead Ellen Ramvi, department of care and ethics, Faculty of Health Sciences, UiS)

The Deathliness of Black Motherhood: The Exile of Black Life in Canada, Sweden and Norway 

While my PhD dissertation (York University, Canada, 2019) performs a nascent survey of Black reproduction through the theme of racist-nationalism my postdoctoral project “The Deathliness of Black Motherhood: The Exile of Black Life in Canada, Sweden and Norway” advances novel insights on (1) Black migrant motherhood, (2) welfare state belongings, and (3) racist-sexism.

At its crux, this research scrutinizes the affective techniques and mortal outcomes of anti-Black racism as they are enacted against the bodies of Black women within white-dominated Northern welfare states. To be precise, this project uses qualitative research methods to investigate how everyday instruments of nationalism regulate the perinatal Black female subject or the Black mother through the painful pedagogies of criminalization, public humiliations, and near-death experiences.

Here I argue that the apparatuses of governmentality meant to assuage social danger (e.g. border control, police, child welfare services) penally fixate on Black women’s reproductive capacities as a source of cultural unassimilability, national precarity, and racial disharmony. As such, this project interrogates how the Black womb and the Black vagina are treated as sites of state enmity and are made punishable for daring to propagate more unintegrable Blackness and fiscal liabilities into white national space. In turn, I examine how the Black fetus or child is either figured within similar logics of racist derision or else, is crudely disciplined into assimilated subjecthood through the mortifying event of the Black mother’s distress.

Queer Herstories of struggle and survival in Romania: From Communist criminalization to contemporary anti-gender movements in SEE spaces

The project uses cutting-edge methodologies and adds unique knowledge that goes beyond the state of the art regarding queer (LBT+) lives of women in SEE. By looking at a previously unresearched topic – the intimate and social lives of queer Romanian women under communism and during the ‘transitional 90s’ – and by comparing the results with research from the SEE region, the project explores how Romania stands out from other SEE and EU countries, unpacking differentiated inequalities across the region. It proposes new understandings of the rapid rise in anti-gender politics in Romania and other SEE countries through excavating novel knowledge on marginalized women’s lives, struggles and strategies of survival.

This is done by gathering original and unique data from interviewing old(er) women, archival and text analysis through a micro historical approach, combined with a comparative analysis of gender norms related to sexuality in both communist and post communist Romania and the SEE. An innovative theoretical framework is developed in order to successfully deal with European challenges regarding policies and political discourses involving gender and sexual minorities, from a transnational perspective. This is achieved by connecting the ways in which the Romanian state enforced homophobia and sexism during communism and until its admission into the EU, by looking at how these state-sanctioned social behaviors trickle until today, and by relating these findings on gender and sexuality with the roots of anti-gender movements in the SEE region.

Project led by Ramona Dima, Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellow, University of Stavanger in collaboration with Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen, Associate professor, UiS, and Lene Myong, Professor, UiS.

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 101022731.

Read more on the project's website.

Imaginaries of Caring Robots: Reading Robots in Science Fiction Through Levinasian Ethics

The ever-growing implementation of care robots in the context of science fiction is moving toward a turning point at which they may qualify for moral agency once they have reached a certain ethical threshold. The questions needed to be addressed: What ethical limitations are at stake in imaginaries of caring robots in science fiction? What can these ethical imaginaries tell us about care, agency and humanness? In my project, I propose Levinas’s ethics as my theoretical framework in order to explore to what extent it is possible to establish “ethical robots”. According to Emmanuel Levinas’s ontology, ethics emerges in our interactions with others. He argues that our capacity to open ourselves unconditionally to the Other is what defines not just our capacity to establish ethical relationships, but also our capacity to be human. As such, this project explores the possibility of considering imaginaries robots as communicative and decision-making entities deserving of attention as well as understanding that they are strange nonhuman others. I support my analysis by exploring questions of otherness through feminist technoscience framework, where the relationships between humans and technology are at the forefront. Therefore, this study calls for a careful analysis of the impact of caring robot imaginaries on questions of agency and ethics. This PhD project is part of UiS-based project, Caring Futures: Developing Care Ethics for Technology-Mediated Care Practices funded by The Research Council of Norway (2021-2024) which aims to develop a care ethics paradigm to inform and ensure quality of care in caring futures.

Queer Materialism: Diffractions of New and Historical Materialisms

In my PhD project I inquire into the possibility of a queer materialism as a field of study as well as a political engagement. Thought out as a triangulation of queer theory, new materialism and historical materialism, this project draws attention to the materiality of the social world as a necessary, active and under-theorised component. Through an engagement with key theoretical texts in said traditions, I explore the social, historical and economic conditions under which bodies as matter come to matter. Attentive to the recent ‘materialist turn’ in the social and cultural sciences, I analyse three crystallisations in the field that I call queer materialism: the in-becoming conjuncture of the two materialist traditions and queer theory. These crystallisations are in the process of materialising in three articles: a theoretical elaboration of the concept of ‘renaturalisation’ through a historically and materially informed analysis of desire and the construction of the hetero-human; a cross-reading of the living-dead dichotomy within Queer Death Studies and historical materialism; and finally a queer materialist discussion of petrocultures. I suggest a diffractive approach that understands the imbrication and complicity of each tradition with the others so as to create constructive accounts of fields of study that historically read each other antagonistically and to provoke alliances where discourse falters.

Confronting fantasies of Scandinavian progressiveness and queer utopia: Queer and trans organizing in Denmark since 1990 

The doctoral project has the tentative title ‘Confronting fantasies of Scandinavian progressiveness and queer utopia: Queer and trans organizing in Denmark since 1990’. Working closely with different groups and individual activists, I intend to trace the emergence of queer and trans movements in Denmark with a main focus on the past 30 years. The overall purpose of this project is to explore both the radical possibilities of queer and trans organizing as well as the pervasive politics and structures of cis-heteronormativity, racism, whiteness, coloniality, capitalism and ableism within Danish society and thus also within queer and trans organizing. 

A central question, I ask in the project, is how understandings of gender, body, queerness, transness, community and resistance are produced, negotiated and reconfigured in the organizing. Furthermore, I am interested in the activists positioning vis-à-vis the nation-state, their alignment with other social justice struggles as well as how they understand and deal with intersectionality and the mainstreaming and cooptation of LGBTIAQ+ politics into the neoliberal state and the nonprofit industrial complex. Through a critical exploration of respectability politics and rights-based activism and the organization of alternatives and resistances to these, I hope to flesh out possibilities for organizing beyond homo/transnationalism, gay imperialism and racial and colonial capitalism. 

The project is community-based and I engage both autoethnographic methods and collaborative ethnography. This means that it is central that the project contributes to movement-building, struggles for social justice and knowledge production which is relevant to the communities from where and with which I do the research. Accountability is thus both an analytical and methodological key concept. Furthermore, I employ a wide range of methods such as archival research, memory work, oral history interviews, participant observation and policy analysis. 

The project is part of, but not funded by, the ‘NordiQueer’ project (PI: Jens Rydström). 

Forced adoption in Denmark and Norway: family, care, and nation state

Since the beginning of the 2000s, Norway has seen an increasing political will to enhance the social services’ application of adoption without the consent of the child’s first parents, and Denmark is following suit in the effort to make forced adoption a regular tool for social policy. Consequently, the number of forced adoptions is increasing in both countries and it appears imperative to question this policy as a significant example of state interference and violence.

Situated between the Danish and Norwegian contexts, the project will seek to understand how forced adoption functions as a biopolitical tool that demarcates liveability and unliveability for vulnerable populations, and investigate how forced adoption as a contemporary policy ‘make live’ and ‘let die’ of family and kin relations. The policy of forced adoption furthermore opens up analysis of how the state establishes the (adoptive) family as a central node for care and happiness against discursive figures such as the ‘unhappy single mother’ and the ‘dysfunctional immigrant family’. Lastly, exchange and comparison between the two contexts in political discourse and knowledge production on forced adoption will be analysed in order to investigate the discursive assembling of Denmark and Norway as nations and welfare states.

The project is a double degree shared between University in Stavanger and Roskilde University.

Exploring changes, tensions and visions in the Nordic region through the prism of identity politics

With identity politics becoming increasingly contested and the locus of intense debates in politics and society, this two-year project takes the conceptual terrain of identity politics a starting point for investigating current challenges - what’s at stake, why, and for whom?  
 
In three workshops we explore the impulses for new understandings of equality and rights, of solidarity and democracy, in the context of the rise of the right, growing nationalism, local and global insecurities. 

The first workshop focuses on democratic participation; the second workshop is concerned with a critical exploration of Nordic exceptionalism; and the third workshop asks, What kinds of lives count? and enquires into humanity, its limits and potentials for radical changes. 

Our ambition is to facilitate collaborations and thinking across disciplines and platforms, expand understandings of how democratic participation transforms the social and the political, and to establish lasting avenues for debate, insights, and new research. 

Steering group 

• Mons Bissenbakker, Associate Professor, Department of Nordic studies and Linguistics, University of Copenhagen, Denmark 
• Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen, Associate Professor, Network for Gender Studies, University of Stavanger (project leader) 
• Mia Liinason, Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies, Department of Cultural Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden 
• Lene Myong, Professor, Network for Gender Studies, University of Stavanger, Norway 
• Michael Nebeling Petersen, Associate Professor, Department for the Study of Culture, University of Southern Denmark 
• Olga Sasunkevich, Associate Senior Lecturer, Department of Cultural Sciences, University of Gothenburg, Sweden 
• Antu Sorainen, Docent in Gender Studies and Academy of Finland Fellow, University of Helsinki, Finland 

Project period: 2018-01-01 – 2019-12-31 

Funding 

Workshop Grant from The Joint Committee for Nordic Research Councils in the Humanities and Social Sciences (NOS-HS) / Vetenskapsrådet and Nordic Council of Ministers

Principal project outcome is an anthology of original texts by workshop participants, edited by Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen and Mia Liinason (Gothenburg). Expected publishing date: 2022.

The use of personal life stories in care work

Knowledge of a person's life history is essential for providing professional, individualized care. Therefore, the Norwegian government has proposed increased use of the so-called "life sheet" in dementia care - short texts or overviews of a person's important life experiences and preferences.

How is a person's life story used?

Healthcare professionals have used life stories in dementia care for many years, but little research has been done in the field. Therefore, a project at the University of Stavanger will map how life stories are collected and how they are put to use in relational care practices at nursing homes in the region.

The project started in 2019, after researchers Nora Simonhjell and Ingvil Hellstrand wrote an article about the life sheet as a narrative genre. The research group is now working on the first of three phases of the project. In the first phase, a survey has been conducted at all nursing homes in Sør-Rogaland. The data collection was carried out by nursing students in clinical practice placements and researchers associated with the project.

Ingvil Hellstrand from Centre for Gender Studies is the projectleader of the "Life Sheet" project.

Interested in queer research?

Queer research has traditionally focused on themes related to sexual and gender minorities (LGBTQ+), particularly in historical and literary contexts. Gradually, queer studies has attained a broad-based interdisciplinary profile, encompassing humanities, social sciences and the natural sciences. Queer theory diverges from queer studies in that queer theory’s ambition is to confront and critically analyze societal norms and value systems – including traditional academic knowledge regimes and the neoliberal corporatization of the university – as socially constructed categories that produce and extend power inequalities. 

The Queer Research Group provides a forum for academic discussions of theoretical, methodological and ethical topics in the field of queer and LGBTQ+ studies and queer theory, hosts presentations and collaborations to do with publishing, funding and work applications, and shares relevant literature and references. Finally, in light of the current geopolitical climate as regards anti-gender politics and attacks on democratic principles and rights, a central ambition for the Group is to promote increased understandings of and dialogues between Norwegian, Nordic and international research, and political mobilizations in this field.  

Read more about Queer Research Group

Contact:

Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen, Professor, UiS Centre for Gender Studies: elisabeth.l.engebretsen@uis.no

What can we learn from the monster and the monstrous?

The figure of the monster is often invoked as something which haunts and disturbs. As a result, the very notion of the monster and the monstrous points to social, ethical and political consequences of what threatens the “normal”. 

As such, monsters can be said to productively roam the in-between, making traditional borders and boundaries tremble and shatter; whether these be borders of nation states or bodies, or categories of race, gender, sexuality, ability, class, self and other. In this sense, the monster seems to embody a promise of disturbances and change, as Donna Haraway argued in her 1992 text “The Promises of Monsters”.  

The Monster Network takes this productive potential of the monster as our starting point. How can the monster serve as a thinking tool for cultural, ethical and political challenges in our times?  

We contribute to the emerging field of Monster Studies through our collective research practices, which are indebted to feminist, queer, decolonial and posthuman frameworks for thinking about relationality, community and responsibility. Our aim is to spark collaborations between artists and scholars by organizing conferences, workshops, publications, symposia and public events as well as creating a space for discussions and publications.

Visit our website for more information. We also have a podcast series called Monster Talks, produced in collaboration with UiS NettOp. 

Network for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies

Centre for Gender Studies organises and coordinates activities with and for Network for Interdisciplinary Gender Studies. The Centre’s director is chairing the network.

Members from Centre for Gender Studies:

• Lene Myong - Professor and Chair of Centre for Gender Studies 
• Elisabeth Lund Engebretsen - Professor, Centre for Gender Studies 
• Ingvil F. Hellstrand -  Associate professor, Centre for Gender Studies (on leave)
• Mathias Klitgård - PhD candidate, Centre for Gender Studies 
• Nico Miskow Friborg - PhD candidate, Centre for Gender Studies 
• Ilghar Azarmanesh - PhD candidate, Centre for Gender Studies 
• Amalie Sehested Rom - PhD candidate, Centre for Gender Studies
• Maja Brandt Andreasen - Postdoctoral fellow, Centre for Gender Studies

Members from UiS: 

• Joel Alba - PhD Candidate, Department of Safety, Economics and Planning 
• Annam Azeem - PhD Candidate, Department of Cultural Studies and Languages
• Aashima Budal - PhD Candidate, Department of Cultural Studies and Languages  
• Marianne Bøe  - Associate professor, Department of Education and Sports Science 
• Hande Ezlen-Ziya  - Professor, Department of Media and Social Sciences 
• Birgitta Haga Gripsrud - Professor, Department of Public Health 
• Marte Handal - PhD candidate, Department of Cultural Studies and Languages 
• Lise K. Meling - Associate professor, Faculty of Performing Arts 
• Kristin Armstrong Oma - Professor, The Museum of Archaeology 
• Ellen Ramvi - Professor, Faculty of Health Sciences 
• Peder W. Roberts - Associate professor, Department of Cultural Studies and Languages 
• Ingrid Rusnes - Lecturer, Department of Media and Social Sciences 
• Ragnhild Sjurseike -  Lecturer, Department of Media and Social Sciences 
• Kristin Sørung Scharffscherr - Associate professor, Department of Safety, Economics and Planning 
• Liv Åsa-Maria Sunnercrantz - Associate professor, Department of Media and Social Sciences 
• Silje Henriette Amalia Nordmand - Associate professor, Department of Education and Sports Science 
• Sverre Kristoffer Guldberg - Associate professor, The Museum of Archaeology 
• Tevfik Murat Yildirim - Associate professor, Department of Media and Social Sciences 
• Henriette Thune - Vice Dean of Reasearch, Faculty of Health Sciences 
• Åse Vagli - Associate professor, Department of Media and Social Sciences 
• Brynjar Åbel Bandlien - Associate professor, Faculty of Performing Arts
• Tone Linge - Associate professor, Norwegian School of Hotel Management
• Olga Gjerald - Associate professor, Norwegian School of Hotel Management
• Bianca Alighieri Luz Monteiro - PhD candidate, Department of Media and Social Sciences
• Ezgi Pehlivanli Kadayifci - Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Media and Social Sciences
• Patrycja Sosnowska-Buxton - Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Social Studies
• Busra Yalcinoz Ucan - Postdoctoral Fellow, Department of Media and Social Sciences
• Reidar Staupe Delgado  - Associate professor, Department of Safety, Economics and Planning
• Ozan Sousbois - Faculty of Social Sciences
• Tanu Biswas - Associate professor, Department of Education and Sports Science
• Linn Anne Margrethe Normand - Associate professor, Department of Education and Sports Science
• Cecilie Larsen - PhD candidate, Department of Media and Social Sciences
• Karen Synnøve Fagerland - PhD candidate, Department of Cultural Studies and Languages

Eksternal members:  

• Inger Gudmundson, Curator, Stavanger Art Museum 
• Kerenina Kezaride Danshom - Assistant professor, VID 

The Research School in Radical Interdisciplinarity (ITEM)

ITEM is a collaborative, cross-sectional initiative between the Museum of Archaeology and Centre for Gender Studies. The aim of The Research School in Radical Interdisciplinarity is to facilitate research that seeks to investigate modes of existences, inequalities, and materialities in temporal perspectives.

In these times of ecological and political crises, it is urgent to scientifically scrutinize the past, present and future histories to do with human life, inter-species relations, environments, technologies, and artefacts, to name a few. As such, ITEM interrogates epistemological and ontological questions from a radical interdisciplinary mode of inquiry.  

Across disciplines

ITEM draws on assemblages of knowledges, methods, and empirical material across disciplines such as archaeology, gender and sexuality studies, anthropology, cultural studies, environmental history, conservation studies, geology, critical race studies, and migration studies.

ITEM offers courses and supervision that are committed to interdisciplinary knowledge production and critical thinking on issues such as of life/death, inequalities, sustainability, human-environment interactions, bodies, identities, the posthuman, technology, migration, kinship, (de)colonization, oppression, racism, resistance, welfare, and politics.

ITEM is at once a research and training platform for PhD candidates and a structured environment for exploratory research engagements at the University of Stavanger. ITEM’s mission is to establish itself as an innovative and sustainable research school for the next generation of researchers. We aim to contribute to the frontline of research training excellence nationally and internationally, and to engage collaborative research training activities through mobility and internationalization programs for PhD candidates as well as for faculty members associated with ITEM.

Integration of PhD candidates

At the core of ITEM’s approach to doctoral training is a commitment to offer PhD candidates a critical foundation research environment devoted to ethical reflections, bottom-up and collaborative participation. ITEM will actively pursue ways to integrate PhD researchers into faculty activities to enhance the knowledge-base and encourage cross-sectional creativity and community. By including PhD candidates in a collaborative research environment, the ITEM collective will facilitate and create processes of intersectional knowledge production, assuring the highest quality by also cooperating with external expertise. PhD candidates are expected to actively partake in and co-organize research activities.

ITEM offers robust PhD courses that address vital theoretical and methodological knowledge as well as a diversity of new developments at the international research front. In addition, a key role for ITEM is to provide spaces and forums for collaboration, exchange and discussion. The school will continuously strive to attain a high level of psychosocial work environment for everyone as part of a resilient research environment.  

ITEM is collaborating with The National Research School for Gender Studies and the international PhD school of archaeology, Dialogues with the past.

Leader: Professor Kristin Armstrong Oma 
Deputy: Professor Lene Myong 

The Council of Centre for Gender Studies

Faste medlemmer:

• Kristiane Marie Fjær Lindland, prodekan for forskning SV-fakultetet, UiS. (Leder for senterrådet)
• Line Nyhagen, Professor, Loughborough University
• Eirinn Larsen, Professor, UiO
• Peder William Chellew Roberts, Førsteamanuensis, UiS
• Gro Ellen Mathisen, Professor, UiS
• Mathias Klitgård, Doktorgradstipendiat, UiS

Varamedlemmer:

• Turid Borgen, Dekan SV-fakultetet, UiS (vara for leder)
• Niels Nyegaard, Postdoktor, UiO
• Ayan Abdi Mohamoud Handulle, Doktorgradstipendiat, UiS

Sekretariat:

• Lene Myong - faglig leder
• Ingvil Førland Hellstrand - studieprogramkoordinator
• Ellen Ersland - administrativ koordinator

Read more about us

Initially established as a research network in 2001, and granted Centre status in 2019, the Centre offers four courses on bachelor- and master-levels as well as a Minor Concentration in Gender Studies. The Centre participates in several collaborative research projects supported by international and national funding agencies.

With the University’s Museum of Archaeology, the Centre organizes a doctoral training school in radical interdisciplinary (ITEM) which emphasizes ethical reflection, explorative research, and collaboration. The Centre for Gender Studies strives to foster an engaged and inclusive work and learning environment for students, faculty and staff, and actively participates in research and popular dissemination platforms, regionally, nationally and internationally.

Ambition

The Centre’s principal ambition is to engage in interdisciplinary research that critically explores structural inequalities broadly defined, and how they contribute towards maintaining, challenging and stratifying various forms of lives and existences. Approaching gender as an analytical category, shaped by feminist theory and critical theories on power, the Centre engages in research that seeks to strengthen interdisciplinary knowledge production from minority perspectives and to connect academic research with political activism, culture and art. Finally, the Centre aims to contribute towards shaping the research agendas in interdisciplinary gender studies, by asking and exploring new research questions and by disseminating knowledge to actors outside the academy and the wider public.