FAMREUN (Family reunification and unaccompanied refugee minors: psychosocial health, integration and support services) investigates how family reunification affects the psychosocial health and integration of unaccompanied refugee minors, and the role of support healthcare and integration services in this process. The aim of the project is to gain knowledge of these young people’s experiences of family reunification, and  of the health and integration services’ experiences of working with URM who have been family-reunited, as well as to optimise the quality, competence, effectiveness, and cooperation between these services.

Project leder and Contact person: Priscilla Ringrose

Funding: Researcher Project Researcher Project for Scientific Renewal (The Research Council of Norway)

Duration: 2023-2027

The project aims to design and launch a tool for qualitative mapping of diversity and inequality at department and research group level. This is an important innovation that will ensure the necessary basis for and support for work on equality and facilitating diversity at Norwegian universities and research institutions. While the challenge of establishing an understanding of gender inequality has had a clear anchoring in ideas about equal representation, the work with diversity forces a need to understand several dimensions of inequality. The problem to which the project seeks an answer is: How can one best view and create an understanding of inequality in a professional environment in ways that provide a basis for choosing measures in action plans for equality and diversity?

In order to answer this, we will examine and analyze experiences from recently completed projects aimed at a qualitative understanding of inequality, as well as what the professional community itself means by diversity in a broader sense.

The project is financed by NFR's BALANSE program and is ongoing in the period 2024-2026.

Read more on the project's own website: KARMA - NTNU

Project manager: Siri Øyslebø Sørensen

This research project is linked to an ongoing service development project under the auspices of Trondheim municipality, NAV and the Church's city mission called "Man onboard". In Man on Board, employees of the Mental Health and Substance Abuse Unit in Trondheim municipality, NAV supervisors and professionals employed by the Church's city mission work together in teams to assist the individual man. No decision or referral is required to be able to make use of the offer. The aim is both to lower the threshold for making contact among those who need support and to work more efficiently across systems that can be challenging to navigate. The target group for the work in Mann onboard is young men aged 18-30. This is because the transition to adulthood is a particularly vulnerable phase for ending up on the outside. Outsiderness can include everything from social isolation and mental illness to unemployment and in some cases outsiderness can also be linked to drugs, crime and belonging to networks on the side of or in opposition to society at large. The work to prevent mental illness and alienation among young men is thus important both for the individual man and from a societal perspective.

Researchers from KULT and the Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management (Indøk) have followed the employees involved in Mann on board since the beginning of 2024 through an action research project which is aimed at further developing a team model for collaboration. As of today, there is also an ongoing master's project aimed at investigating the experiences of the users of the offer.

The project group is seeking external funds to expand the research and is also open to students who wish to link Master's theses or PhD projects to issues that are relevant to better understand the target group for men on board, or that relate to organization or practice in the services.

Project group: Siri Øyslebø Sørensen (KULT) and Hanne Finnestrand (Indøk)

The purpose of the preliminary project is to contribute to the development of knowledge that can prevent alienation and mental illness among young men and to contribute to innovation in the service offering aimed at this target group. Sub-goals to achieve this are to a) establish a network across research and practice, b) collect and synthesize relevant knowledge and c) develop a larger research project and apply for external funding for this.

The project is financed by NTNU's strategic investment area Community and runs 2024-2025.

Project manager: Siri Øyslebø Sørensen

Cultural Politics of sexuality and ’race’ in Norwegian

Ph.D. dissertation defended by Stine Helena Bang Svendsen, 2014.

The point of departure of this PdH dissertation was the reconfiguration of sexual and racial politics in the Norwegian public sphere over the past decade. Both gender equality and homotolerance was transformed from contested political issues to common values that were seen to positively distinguish Norwegian culture in this process. Furthermore, these issues were increasingly taken up to describe both cultural differences and ”cultural conflicts” internationally and in Norway.

This dissertation investigates the cultural configuration of sexuality and ‘race’ in Norwegian education as they appear in textbooks and in classrooms interaction. The analysis highlights the persistence of heteronormalizing and racializing conceptual frameworks in education that aims to combat discrimination. Specifically, it argues that the denial of ‘race’ as a relevant concept in Norwegian public discourse and education currently hinders educational efforts to prevent racism among young people. Furthermore, it sheds light on how affective aspects of classroom interaction can strengthen or work against education that reproduces oppressive social norms.

The PhD project is about studying experiences with and the consequences of increased internationalization of academia. Internationalization has long been an ambition for the university and college sector, and includes phenomena such as increased academic mobility, international publishing, recruitment practices and increased use of English. This development represents a choice of path for academia when it comes to their role in society and the working day for employees. The research focus for the project is at NTNU, which for several years has had a strategy for increased internationalisation.

The working title of the project is: 'Internationalisation of academia: Between politics, discourse and lived experience'. The research area is internationalization policy, media debate on the subject and information from interviews with employees who experience the working day on their bodies. By studying various aspects of the phenomenon, I will find the gap between politics and lived life in an internationalized academy.

The project is financed by the Faculty of Humanities, NTNU.

Buying and Selling (gender) Equality: Feminized Migration and Gender Equality in Contemporary Norway

The aim of this research project, which ended in 2016, has been to explore the relation between gender equality and the global feminized migration of domestic workers and au pairs. The project was justified by a need for a better understanding of the significance of gender and ethnicity in the formulation of the equality politics of the Norwegian welfare state, with reference to equality between women and men, equality between ethnic majority and ethnic minorities and social/economic levelling. The project has been informed by the concepts of intersectionality and complexity, and has addressed the VAM-program's focus on the significance of inter- and transnational dimensions in the development of the welfare society.

The project has been based at Department of interdisciplinary Studies of Culture and funded by the Norwegian Research Council (NFR) under the programme Welfare, Working life and Migration (VAM) for the period 2011-2014.

More info and publications on the projects webpage

De-gendered equality politics? The making of a political breakthrough for corporate board gender quotas in Norway

Ph.D. dissertation defended by Siri Øyslebø Sørensen, 2013.

The dissertation explores the controversies and chains of action taking place prior to the introduction of legal regulation of gender balance on corporate boards. Through a qualitative, empirical study of how gender quotas on corporate boards were formulated and staged as a policy reform, the study challenges common ideas about how gender equality politics are shaped. Overall the thesis contributes to an ongoing debate on the need for developing new theoretical and analytical perspectives on gender equality politics.

Experts and minorities in the land of gender equality

Gender Equality as a Cultural Borderline – between ”Us” and ”Them”

Funding: Research Council Norway / The Program of Gender Research, 2009-2013

This project explored how Norwegian work organizations changing from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous work staff handle this situation in the light of equality politics and diversity politics. A main finding is how the categories of gender, ethnicity/race and sexuality intersect in various ways and make some employees more preferable and appropriate than others.

Gender Equality as a Cultural Borderline – between ”Us” and ”Them”

Funding: Research Council Norway / The Program of Gender Research.

This project explored how Norwegian work organizations changing from a homogeneous to a heterogeneous work staff handle this situation in the light of equality politics and diversity politics. A main finding is how the categories of gender, ethnicity/race and sexuality intersect in various ways and make some employees more preferable and appropriate than others.

Contact person: Siri Øyslebø Sørensen

The goal of the report is to gain increased understanding of how international researchers experience their every-day working lives at NTNU, as well as how the support-network in the shape of both leadership and central and local administration meet international researchers. The report focuses on identifying what works and what can be improved regarding the work of including and fair treatment of researchers with different backgrounds at NTNU. It also gives an overview over existing research of international diversity at Norwegian universities.

Project period: June 2019- February 2020

Funding: The Committee for Equality and Diversity at NTNU

NTNU site for INTMANG

At the Crossroads between Official Policies, Public Discourses and Everyday Practices

Contact person: Berit Gullikstad

This project will explore how integration is perceived, practised and experienced in political, institutional and everyday practices in selected local communities that have successfully ‘accomplished’ the overarching aim of immigrant integration on the level of labour market participation. The project takes as its starting point an understanding of integration as a contested concept that is negotiated, stabilised and destabilised through politics and everyday life.

We will have a particular focus on asymmetrical structural and symbolic power dimensions of gender, class, and ethnicity. The research design is based on qualitative research methods and cultural analytical perspectives.

"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who´s most powerful of them all?"

The primary goal of the Mirror, mirror project (2013-2016) was to explore the cultural and social dynamics of gender in influential sectors of society, such as the financial elite, the petrolium industry and the military. What is it about gender, power, and leadership that create a situation wherein men continue to be the leaders of powerful organizations, and how can one think politically about it? This project set out to demonstrate how perspectives from the Humanities and cultural theoretical perspectives can provide insight into the symbolic and cultural meanings of gendered power.

The project addressed questions such as: What symbolic constructions of gender and leadership are found in powerful organizations, as well as in alternative political organizations, and political visions? How are these symbolic constructions connected with structural distribution of power between the sexes? What are the backward-looking and/or forward-looking scientific, cultural, and symbolic meanings of gendered power? How do cultural representations effect recruitment and career development of women and men in the organizations?

Norway-Japan: Bridging Research and Education in Gender Equality and Diversity (NJ_BREGED) 

Contact person: Guro Korsnes Kristensen 

This project was a three-year research and teaching collaboration between the Center for Gender Research (CGR) at Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture at NTNU (Norway) and the Institute for Gender Studies (IGS) at Ochanomizu University (Tokyo, Japan).

The project explored to what extent and in which ways we can envisage and/or problematize the ‘export’ of the Norwegian dual earner/dual career model of gender equality to a national context with differing political systems and culture. It asked how the political ideal of gender equality relates to other axes of difference, such as social class, ethnicity/race, sexuality and age within and across the Japanese and Norwegian national contexts. The research questions was addressed through the mutual exchange of both scientific staff and students.

The project was funded my INTPART, RCN and ran from 2019-2022.

NTNU site for NJ_BREGED

The role of digital sharing platforms in social interaction in neighbourhoods

Contact person (KULT): Deniz Akin

The main objective of this project is to investigate how the use of digital collaborative sharing platforms contribute to social interaction and citizen participation in neighbourhoods.

Engaging in and collaborating with citizens and volunteering organisations, this project will evaluate the use of both the existing and the new collaborative sharing platforms, and measure the social and economic effects of this use.  Furthermore, the project aims to set the premises for future digital care infrastructure in collaboration with organizations and residents, as well as contribute to theory and method development at the intersection of ICT, social sciences and humanities.

The project utilizes qualitative research methods and will collect data through semi-structural interviews with different actors, and observation in respect to the following selected cases: Fretex arbeidsformidling, Røde Kors (besøksvenn-ordningen og flyktningguide-ordningen) and Frivillighetssentralen.

Sharing Neighborhoods is an interdisciplinary research project involving, SINTEF Digital, SINTEF Technology and Society, SINTEF Byggforsk, Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture, NTNU and selected user groups.

Project leader is senior research scientist Jacqueline Floch from SINTEF Digital. NTNU participants are Deniz Akin (postdoctoral fellow), Guro Korsnes Kristensen (researcher) and Thomas Berker (researcher) from the Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture.

Queer Challenges to the Norwegian Policies and Practices of Immigration: Asylum seeking in Norway on the grounds of sexual orientation-based persecution

Ph.D. dissertation defended by Deniz Akin, 2017.

This project expored how the cases of queer asylum seekers are assessed in Norway, by focusing on Norway's treatment of queer asylum seekers application for protection. The project was primarily investigating the following research question:

How do Norwegian immigration authorities understand a genuine sexual orientation and a credible risk of persecution that determine queer claimants' entitlement to asylum in Norway? 

The empirical material consists of Norwegian legislation and interviews with caseworkers at The Norwegian Directorate of Immigration and Asylum Seekers.