Research Interests
My research interests have developed from experiences as a professional social worker.
I wanted a meaningful job that aid people to live good lives. The problem was that I had not reflected much on what a "good life" is. My professional training and my first jobs never challenged this question, because there were already answers. I also understood early on that there are dimensions of human beings I find exciting and important, which one does not really get to explore in such jobs, because there are specific guidelines for what should take place and how the relationships should be. In other words, it was human encounters in the professional practice that created questions and challenges, and when I took an experience-based master's degree, I experienced that practice itself opened up for broader discussions and opportunities, in conversations with other, often similar practices. For me, the spaces where someone is doing something, a practice, form the basis for wonder, discussion, openings and opportunities, and are defining for the kind of research I enjoy doing. I am also very concerned with the where of the practice, and the significance of the spaces, both physical and relational, of what takes place.
The research I have been doing has always been based on this belief that it is the encounters and the practice, and the spaces where these are, that form the basis for new knowledge and new questions. This has also been something I have worked on in relation to method, and I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to gather knowledge from practice, especially based on the spaces. In research with people, it is an important challenge to find the balance between one's own research communication and giving space and voice to those with whom one is researching. This challenge, ie not depriving others of space and voice, is part of all relationships we enter into, both professionally and privately. This topic is the most central for me as a researcher.
Both my dissertation on marginalization in public sphere, and my postdoctoral project on understandings of hospitality in relation to migration, are really about who is given space and a voice, where, how and in what ways.
My dissertation Calling Bodies in Lived Spaces: Spatial Explorations on the Concept of Calling in a Public Urban Space combines perspectives from spatial theory, ethics and fieldwork. It focuses on the tensions and contradictions in lived spaces through observations of encounters and interaction between different groups in public urban space . It is an interdisciplinary contribution to the science of diaconia. The interest lies in the lives that diaconia has traditionally been concerned with and the spaces in which these lives are lived. The dissertation explores the concept of calling through narratives about these lives and spaces. Furthermore, it challenges and contributes to traditional ideas about calling as it is understood in the Scandinavian context. These notions of calling, which have their origins in Lutheran interpretations, place the calling among and between humans, as opposed to it being something that is exclusively divine and ecclesial.
In my postdoctoral project, Magnificent Encounters in Borderland, I explore borderland issues from three different perspectives. These are spatial theory, theology and phenomenology, all as a basis for methodology and theology development. Central to all of these is the body.
Space is actively understood as an intricate web of relationships and circumstances that are constantly produced and reproduced. Spaces are formative. The analysis thus relates to active production processes. In the Nordic borderlands, both those who arrive and the ones already there all produce space, and these spaces exist from the moment they enter each other's embodied sphere.
The theological perspective is based on Scandinavian creation theology. This theological tradition is central to Nordic cultural and religious heritage, and can thus be a lens for uncovering and interpreting Nordic hospitality. It has to do with our view of humanity, that we are constantly responsible for the ongoing creation, and for our constantly created fellow human beings. The other has always been a central figure and phenomenon for theology, where the task has been to perceive the other. In phenomenology, the fact that we share [created] life, reality and the world makes us part of the same lifeworld. Reality is thus open, which allows for thinking about otherness and change for the world. This is a normative, philosophical, life-interpreting perspective on God, life, humans and the world.
Borderlands are areas where traditional oppositions between secular and sacred, religion and politics, ethics and emic are discussed and reconfigured. In the practical, empirical world [lived space], there are rarely such binaries. A spatial interpretation is always triadic, it rejects all binaries, there is always something third. This premise challenges us to expand beyond the binaries from the outset.
Now I am primarily researching topics in the intersections between migration and religion. When religion and migration meet, new spaces, new relationships, new challenges and new questions appears. In these there is an enormous potential for development of new knowledge and sharing, which can contribute in a range of practical and academic fields.
Interests: Citizenship, migration and religion, phenomenology, professional ethics, science of diaconia, urbanity and space
Academic Interests
Human Encounter, Religion and Migration, Dialogue, Marginalisation, Citizenhsip, Spatial Theory, Urbanity, Christian Social Practice, Diaconia
Background
- PhD: “Calling Bodies in Lived Space. Spatial Explorations on the Concept of Calling in a Public Urban Space” (2016).
- Master degree in Professional Ethics and Science of Diaconia, Faculty of Theology (2006)
- Bachelor, child welfare officer, Sør-Trøndelag University College (2002)
- Professional experience from work and practices directed at substance users.