Martin Veier-Olsen
About
About Me
I am an Associate Professor at the Department of Experts in Teams, with an academic background in educational science and history didactics. At the Department of Experter in Teams, I work with the course’s learning materials and the training and follow-up of teaching staff, with a particular emphasis on the virtual EiT courses. My research interests lie especially in the course’s learning philosophy and its theoretical and empirical foundations.
I hold a PhD from the Department of Teacher Education (ILU), where I was a PhD candidate fellow from 2019 to 2024. In my doctoral project, I studied how multimodal timelines visualize time and concepts, including what happens when time itself becomes the object of inquiry in the discipline of history. Read more about the project below.
As a historian by training, I have been particularly interested in local history, early political history, and cultural history—with an emphasis on Scandinavia and surrounding regions. My master’s thesis explored cultural encounters between Danish officials and Norwegian society in the decades following the loss of Norwegian independence in 1537. The thesis was awarded the Fritt Ord grant by the Norwegian Historical Association (HIFO) in 2018.
I am also interested in philosophical and interdisciplinary questions, such as conceptions of time in history, human temporal experiences, and the relationship between natural and human time.
Summary of my PhD project
Timelines are commonly used to visualize history and chronology. Some represent straightforward simplifications of historical complexity; others are highly intricate and colorful visualizations that require careful decoding to be understood. Despite their widespread use, there is little empirical research on how timelines can be used to develop historical knowledge and understanding. My dissertation investigates the didactic use of timelines to visualize key components of historical literacy, especially concepts and temporality.
Timelines have been an integral part of the textual culture of history long before the historical scientific discipline was formalized. In other words, they appear to be a natural or even instinctive way of expressing historical knowledge. Timelines are also mentioned in both the National Curricula for Knowledge Promotion in Primary and Secondary Education and Training of 2006 and 2020, and they have been prevalent in Norwegian textbooks even prior to these reforms.
In the dissertation, I analyze both didactic research on timelines and 23 sets of teaching and learning materials in social science, including textbooks and teacher guides, to develop a conceptual framework for understanding timelines within a history didactics context. I also collaborated with four tenth-grade classes to develop a didactic tool aimed at helping students construct historical timelines.
Although the project explored how timelines can visualize historical literacy, the overall investigations also led to the development of the concept of temporal literacy. This concept is not limited to history, but also addresses more fundamental and existential questions about how humans orient themselves in time and experience temporal existence. Our shared human experiences of multi-temporal rhythms and sequences can connect us with both contemporaries and people of the past. The timeline places the temporal dimension at the center, making time itself phenomenologically accessible through visual means.
Temporal literacy involves not only understanding oneself as a historically situated being, but also as a temporal agent within a plurality of times—historical, anthropological, climatic, geological, and others. In this way, the timeline may be an even more powerful tool than this project has been able to uncover.
Publications
2024
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Veier-Olsen, Martin;
Maliks, Jakob Mattias.
(2024)
Linjer og tverrsnitt i historisk tid: Tidslinjas visualisering av temporalitet og historisk literacy.
Doktoravhandlinger ved NTNU (234)
Doctoral dissertation
2019
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Veier-Olsen, Martin.
(2019)
«Tesligeste skall ieg och lyde en stor nød
mett tisze bergmend y winther». Telemarksopprøret 1540 – et unngåelig opprør.
Heimen - Lokal og regional historie
Academic article
2017
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Opsahl, Erik;
Veier-Olsen, Martin.
(2017)
"...dett land er icke som andre landt Danmarck eller Tysland". Kulturmøter: dansk øvrighet - nordmenn og norske forhold, ca. 1537-1570.
NTNU, Institutt for historiske studier
Masters thesis
Journal publications
-
Veier-Olsen, Martin.
(2019)
«Tesligeste skall ieg och lyde en stor nød
mett tisze bergmend y winther». Telemarksopprøret 1540 – et unngåelig opprør.
Heimen - Lokal og regional historie
Academic article
Report
-
Veier-Olsen, Martin;
Maliks, Jakob Mattias.
(2024)
Linjer og tverrsnitt i historisk tid: Tidslinjas visualisering av temporalitet og historisk literacy.
Doktoravhandlinger ved NTNU (234)
Doctoral dissertation
-
Opsahl, Erik;
Veier-Olsen, Martin.
(2017)
"...dett land er icke som andre landt Danmarck eller Tysland". Kulturmøter: dansk øvrighet - nordmenn og norske forhold, ca. 1537-1570.
NTNU, Institutt for historiske studier
Masters thesis
Outreach
2024
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LectureLunga, Peter Sigurdson; Veier-Olsen, Martin; Øystese, Martin. (2024) Skisse til ny lærebok i europeisk middelalderhistorie: Didaktisk og tematisk konsept. Middelaldersenteret Internseminar Middelaldersenteret , Dragvoll, Trondheim 2024-11-06 - 2024-11-06
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LectureVeier-Olsen, Martin. (2024) Tid og tidslinjer i historie - hva og hvorfor?. NTNU Universitetsbiblioteket Dragvoll Kunnskap:kaffe 2024-11-20 - 2024-11-20
2023
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LectureVeier-Olsen, Martin. (2023) An (educational) medieval canon? The Middle Ages in the Norwegian primary and lower secondary education since 1997 . MIDDAK: Middelalderdidaktikk Konsolideringsseminar for forskergruppa MIDDAK , Scandic Stiklestad 2023-03-01 - 2023-03-03
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LectureVeier-Olsen, Martin. (2023) Tidslinjeception: Forskningsdesign og forskningsprosess. Seksjon for samfunnsfagene, Institutt for lærerutdanning Faglig forum 2023-10-26 - 2023-10-26
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Popular scientific lectureVeier-Olsen, Martin. (2023) Mellom dannelse og vitenskap: Tid og tidslinjer i skolens historiefag. Lysholmbiblioteket/Institutt for lærerutdanning Kunnskapslunsj 2023-10-19 - 2023-10-19
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LectureVeier-Olsen, Martin. (2023) Historisk literacy gjennom tidslinjer. Fagleg literacy i skule og lærarutdanning Faglig literacy i skole og lærerutdanning: Veien hit og veien videre , Scandic Nidelven, Trondheim 2023-09-14 - 2023-09-15
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LectureVeier-Olsen, Martin. (2023) Changes in the visual temporalisation of the past: Timelines and visualised temporality in Norwegian social studies textbooks since 1997. Educating active and democratic citizens in challenging time Social studies in Times of Crisis today , Åbo 2023-05-30 - 2023-06-01
2022
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LectureVeier-Olsen, Martin. (2022) Linjer og utsnitt i Trondheims lærerutdanning. NTNU Lærerutdanningen 100 år – Jubileumskonferanse , Campus Kalvskinnet 2022-10-06 - 2022-10-06
2021
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LectureVeier-Olsen, Martin. (2021) Tidslinjer i samfunnsfagets læremidler etter L97 - en kartlegging. HIPOLS HIPOLS' forskergruppeseminar , NTNU Kalvskinnet 2021-10-21 - 2021-10-21
2018
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LectureVeier-Olsen, Martin. (2018) Fagfornyelsen sett i lys av temporalitet, med vekt på periodisering og tidslinjer. Universitetet i Sørøst-Norge Nasjonal nettverkskonferanse for samfunnsfag , Campus Drammen 2018-11-28 - 2018-11-29