Contact: Odin Hjemdal

About the research centre:

The Resilience Centre for the promotion of Mental Health and Wellbeing across Cultures and the Lifespan is a research group dedicated to advancing the understanding and promotion of resilience to enhance mental health and wellbeing in clinical and non-clinical settings.  The Centre is a leading research group in the field of resilience, utilizing interdisciplinary approaches to advance the understanding and promotion of resilience to enhance mental health and wellbeing across diverse populations and contexts.

Focus and scope

Our work focuses on the complexity and multisystemic nature of resilience, connecting biological, psychological, social-environmental, community, and ecological factors to conduct rigorous research that bridges theory, empirical evidence, and practical applications to develop effective interventions and policies designed to enhance resilience. Resilience theory is at the core of the work we do, and our interdisciplinary an international collaboration leverages resilience theory and its articulation with other core theories and concepts for collaborative research. 

• Our work aims to explain how vulnerable children, youth and adults across diverse contexts thrive in families, schools, workplaces, and communities while exposed to significant stress. 
• We continuously investigate new ways to apply resilience effectively to boost wellbeing, such as the use of new technologies for evaluation and intervention.
• Furthermore, we are interested in developing an interdisciplinary approach to systematically connect psychological resilience with ecological, environmental, organizational or community interventions. 
• We collaborate with academic and community partners to ensure that our research is informed by the lived experiences of the communities we serve. 

Working with diverse research institutions, we have developed various valid and reliable instruments for assessing protective factors involved in resilience. They include Resilience Scales for Adults (RSA), and Adolescents (READ) and the School Resilience Scale (SRS), for assessing collective resources involved in resilience. In addition to conducting research, the Centre is also dedicated to teaching and disseminating research findings to a wider audience, including policymakers, practitioners, and the general public by hosting seminars, workshops, and conferences. The Centre aims to translate research findings into practical interventions and policies that can be implemented to promote resilience and mental health.