PhD positions at the Faculty of Humanities

PhD-positions at the Faculty of Humanities

PhD-positions within specific research projects are regularly announced at NTNU's vacancies page.

The Faculty normally announces a few positions each year openly within the Faculty's research areas. The deadline is generally in September/October. The applications must be connected to specific research groups/networks at the Faculty. Which groups/networks that are included in the announcement may vary from year to year. Some research areas and projects may be part of several groups/networks and across different departments. These applications should follow the supervisor's affiliation and the supervisor must be employed at one of the Faculty's departments.

The project description must be written in the following template: Template for project description

Applications to the open PhD-positions have to be connected to one of our four PhD research programmes:

The dissertation can be written either as a monography or as a cohesive collection of shorter academic works, (a so-called article-based dissertation). It can also be composed as a written component and a lasting documented product, that combined satisfy the demands of an independent, scientific research project.

Følgende forskergrupper og -nettverk inngår i åpen utlysning

Open Call 2025

Read the Open Call 2025 (Jobbnorge.no) – application deadline: October 15, 2025.

The following research groups and networks are included in the Open Call for 2025:

Centre for Medieval Studies at the Faculty of Humanities

The Centre for Medieval Studies is the Faculty of Humanities' strengthened focus on the Middle Ages until 2030. The centre is led by Professor of Medieval History Erik Opsahl, and coordinates research, teaching and dissemination of the Middle Ages in its breadth. The centre has an interdisciplinary approach to the Middle Ages, and researchers from a number of disciplines are affiliated with the centre. These disciplines include history, archaeology, art history, languages, literature, musicology, philosophy and the classical studies. Applications across all these fields are welcomed.

Contact person: Erik Opsahl

Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies

AAE is an interdisciplinary research group situated at IFR. We have a joint interest in understanding agency and identity, the role of action and interaction (both at the individual and collective level) as well as embodiment. The group seeks to enable and strengthen the dialogue between the humanities and sciences, bringing together researchers in philosophy, religious studies, interdisciplinary culture studies with psychology, neuroscience, and AI. The group´s main goal is to provide a new interdisciplinary platform at NTNU, enabling members to share, discuss and advance both theoretical and empirical research on these shared topics.

Research areas/ research interests:

Artificial intelligence is increasingly affecting human and social lives, in diverse domains. As it does so, pressing ethical and political concerns about accountability, responsibility, and power arise. These concerns are connected with, and should be informed by, basic questions about what forms of understanding, intelligence, and communication that AI systems make possible or engender. NTNU’s research group on AI, ethics, and philosophy brings together philosophers, social scientist, and technologists exploring these foundational issues about AI.

From the point of view of ethics and social studies of technology, topics of concern include the liability to bias in AI systems; their role in facilitating surveillance; how they shift the power balance among private citizens, the state, and major corporations; how they enable large-scale, systematic manipulation and deception. Questions of interest here also include the hopes that have been voiced by some for morally salutary role of AI creating so-called moral machines or fostering moral enhancement.

From the point of view of theories of computation, cognition, and communication, in theoretical computer science, cognitive science, and philosophy, questions explored include what forms of meaning, understanding, or representation that can be attributed to AI systems. This bears on the issue of what sorts of explanation or intelligibility increasingly opaque AI systems may admit of. Notably, it bears upon the extent to which such systems properly can be explained in broadly common-sense or agent-like terms, an issue that must inform what notions of accountability that have application.

Ethics/ applied ethics: Bias in algorithms; Surveillance capitalism; AI/ moral enhancement; Moral machines; Research ethics

Theoretical-philosophical: Cognition/ philosophy of mind; neuroscience/consciousness; AI/ language; systems biology; machine learning; AWS

Empirical, social science: Computerdriven public management; context-dependendence of AI systems; power balance citizen/state

Department of Historical Sciences (from August 1st 2025)

The project wants to uncover what is required for larger interdisciplinary projects that work with the exploration of technology as a learning tool and department-oriented initiatives to be implemented in learning practices on campus. Specifically, the project will look at the use of low-cost VR as a case study, evaluating how VR technology as a diversifying form of learning can be taken from test to implementation. They will investigate how to benefit from active collaboration between technology, science and the humanities and social sciences when it comes to technology-supported teaching. This will be exemplified by the use of VR.

Potential supervisors:
Martin Callanan
Heidrun Stebergløkken

Projects in this area study processes and phenomena in Europe after 1945. The activities contribute to increasing knowledge and understanding of trans- and international political, social, economic and cultural processes in Europe and an increasingly interconnected world. The activity therefore covers how European countries and Europe collectively relate to globalisation processes.

1) Transnational activity in the EU (and its precursors):

Transnational political cooperation after 1945. The research is linked to the project 'Shaping Europe: (ShapEU) – Interdependence, integration and transnational political parties 1945–2020'. The focus of this research is political internationals (Liberal International, Christian democratic and conservative parties, socialist and social democratic parties and green parties) and their role in the post-1945 European integration process.
Transnational cooperation on environmental and nature protection after 1945
Great Britain and the European integration process after 1945

2) Other topics within Norwegian and European contemporary history

Potential supervisors:

Democratize is an interdisciplinary research group in democratization, bringing together scholars from History, International Relations, European Studies, and Political Science who share an understanding of democratization as a dynamic and fragile process that is never quite fully completed. Exploring democracies and democratization processes across time and space, the group’s researchers study:

how democracies come about, historically and contemporaneously;
how and why democracies consolidate and what keeps them resilient (i.e political culture, civil society);
concepts of democracy across time and space;
democratic practices (petitioning; voting);
the international context of democratization (colonialism; contemporary democracy promotion; the role of alternative norms providers);
how democracies erode as a result foreign interference, the rise of radical parties, populism, nationalism.

People (potential supervisors with asterisk):

Anna Brigevich* (coordinator)
Madalina Dobrescu* (coordinator)
Jan Frode Hatlen*
Jon Olav Hove*
John Kwadwo Osei-Tutu*
Valentin Luntumbue
Anne Engelst Nørgaard*
Lise Rye*
Tobias Schumacher*
Ragnar Weilandt
Marco Parluhutan

Research includes several areas and ongoing projects:

Political economy/Resource economy/Living standard and education/Poverty and inequality
Resources and societal development in a global perspective
National regulations
European integration and international institutions
Norwegian multinational companies
Raufoss. The Department is working on developing research and projects based around Raufoss ammunition factory (today NAMMO). Their archives are currently being made available for research.

For more information, contact potential supervisors:

The research group “Explosive Legacy” combines historical academic research with other scientific methods to detect occurrences of dumped ammunition. The ambition is to explain why this has taken place and why it has not been perceived as an environmental problem.

See the research group’s webpage at NTNU Society Safety

Potential supervisors:

The research group includes scholars from VM, IE, IV, and Falstad.

The basis for the formation of the research group was a desire to look at the political, economic and social consequences that followed in the wake of changing economic, demographic and environmental conditions in the late Middle Ages. The Late Middle Ages have traditionally been portrayed as a time of crisis in which the national elites– in contrast to the rest of the population – were not really able to meet the challenges posed by the demographic decline and the accompanying changes in economic conditions. This has then been linked to political powerlessness, often collectively described as "Norway's decline". This understanding of Norwegian society in the late Middle Ages has been consistently conveyed through reviews, and in schools and popular history for several generations. However, recent research has nuanced this picture.

In line with an international development in which the late Middle Ages are considered an important and "normal" historical period, the research group examines the interaction between the political sphere on the one hand and the economic and social spheres on the other. The relationship between resources, technology and society is also part of this "new" research on the late Middle Ages. The purpose of the research group is to develop projects where we investigate the Norwegian elite's restructuring strategies in the face of changing economic, demographic and environmental conditions in the period ca. 1350-1650. The elite's relationship with the rest of the population will be at the center of the research. Not just contradictions, but just as much the connection – or cooperation – between representatives of different social groups both through political-administrative as well as more personal ties, women as well as men, and for both the Sami and the Norwegian population.

For more information, contact Randi B. Wærdahl, randi.werdahl@ntnu.no, phone no. + 47 73 59 64 37.

The Environmental Archaeology research group seeks to enhance the knowledge of human animal interactions throughout prehistory and early history, taking a point of departure in the unique collections housed at the NTNU University Museum and bringing together an interdisciplinary node of expertise. The group wishes to advance research on thematic areas, such as:

•   climatic change and environmental variability in spatial and temporal contexts
•   cultural resilience, adaptations, and transformations in changing environments
•   environmental impacts on human societies and animals
•   human and animal transformations to domesticated lifestyles
•   resource management and the role of outfield resources in a long-time-perspective
•   foodway dichotomies of rural and urban medieval life
•   climatic and environmental impact of cultural monuments and sites

The group explores epistemological and ontological pathways to understand issues of core importance to studying ecological questions of the past such as deep time, adaptability, and resilience.

Projects and research questions are approached by way of multidisciplinary and/or multiproxy studies, employing methods such as: 14C dating, stable isotope analysis, palaeo-genomics, RNA, proteomics (including ZooMS\peptide fingerprinting), osteology, trace analysis and distribution of raw materials, pXRF with different materials at hand: archaeological sites, features and artifacts, human and animal bones, macro- and microfossil and other sediment analyses.

Contacts at IHK: Martin Callanan; Marek E. Jasinski; Heidrun Stebergløkken; Ingrid Ystgaard.

IAK: James Barrett; Hein Bjartmann Bjerck; Heidi Mjelva Breivik; Axel Christophersen; Merete Moe Henriksen; Torkel Johansen; Birgitte Skar. NLD: Bente Philippsen; Martin Seiler; Helene Svarva. INH: Mike Martin; Sarah Martin Postdocs: Danni Buss; Katrien Dierickx; Mohsen Falahati Anbaran ; Youri van den Hurk. PhD students: Eleni Diamanti; Monica Nordanger Enehaug; Skule Spjelkavik; Lisa Mariann Strand; Elisabeth Forrestad Swensen.

The group has monthly meetings.

The group consists of staff from the Department of Archaeology and Cultural History and the Department of Historical Sciences (core team):
Birgitte Skar, Geir Grønnesby, Heidi M. Breivik, Heidrun Stebergløkken, Hein B. Bjerck, Jon Anders Risvaag, Merete M. Henriksen, Silje E. Fretheim, Skule O.S. Spjelkavik (Ph.D).

We aim to involve professionals from museum collections and heritage management, as well as interested resource persons from the county municipalities of Møre og Romsdal, Trøndelag, and Nordland. We also seek to establish collaborations with research environments and groups from universities in other regions of Norway.

Research Areas / Questions the Group Will Address

The group is newly established and is built around the chronological periods of the Stone Age (9500–1700 BCE) and the Bronze Age (1700–500 BCE). It aims to explore themes within and across these time blocks. This period spans over 9,000 years, marked by major transformations of ritual, social, political, and economic character, as well as changes in the landscape and climatic conditions for settlement and resource use.
Cultural heritage from the Early Stone Age in the region primarily includes traces of settlement. Toward the end of this phase, rock art also appears as a category. Through management and research projects, we have gained substantial knowledge about social structures, mobility, and settlement, as well as landscape and resource use during this part of the Stone Age.

In the Bronze Age, much of the source material consists of burial monuments, rock art, and hoards, while traces of settlements are more fragmented and scattered. This has led to a research focus on ritual practices, as well as networks of contact and political and social structures.
The Neolithic material in Central Norway has been less studied. In recent decades, a significant amount of archaeological material from this period has been collected, excavated, and documented, including settlements, rock art, graves, and fossilized agricultural landscapes. The Neolithic is also the period in which the most extensive societal transformation we know of occurs: the introduction of agriculture. This change was clearly not only economic but had a profound impact on all aspects of society and culture. At the same time, we still see traces of a more specialized hunter-gatherer culture during the same period.

Increased regionalization in the Late Stone Age is reflected in the archaeological material through differences in raw material use, technological and morphological expressions in tools, as well as in rock art, houses, and settlements. During this phase, Central Norway increasingly becomes a meeting point between different traditions and knowledge systems and appears to develop a stronger regional character than before—though this has yet to be systematically mapped.

A research focus on the Neolithic could broaden our perspectives on both the preceding and following periods: knowledge about settlement and resource use/economy can be traced forward in time from the Early Stone Age, while questions related to ritual and social practices can be extended backward in time. In this way, two somewhat different research traditions can enrich each other, while also bringing the truly long lines of prehistory into the light.

The research group includes a newly appointed Ph.D. candidate working on mobility and landscape use, focusing on stone technology and raw material use in the Neolithic. The group is currently planning the Stone Age Conference 2024, which will be held in Trondheim. This is a collaboration between researchers from the Department of Archaeology and Cultural History and the Department of Historical Sciences.
The group meets approximately once a month.

Contact person: Heidrun Stebergløkken

The research group “Jewish Life” explores Norwegian-Jewish life after the Holocaust in its encounters with the broader society. More specifically, it examines the role of Norwegian-Jewish cultural heritage in integration and identity formation, as well as interactions between majority and minority populations in everyday life and public discourse.

Potential supervisors:

The research group includes scholars from SU, Falstad, the Jewish Museum in Oslo, and the Jewish Museum in Trondheim.

The research group's activities are concentrated around three main projects:

1) The early phase of the welfare state.

2) Demographics.

3) Mental health and crime.

Contact possible supervisors for more information:

The research group “Mission Mjøsa” is concerned with the interaction between humans and nature from a historical perspective. The group examines how population, settlement patterns, and economic activity around Lake Mjøsa have developed over time, and how these changes have affected the natural environment. This also includes how Mjøsa has been understood and interpreted as “nature.”

Department of Art and Media Studies

Human activity has significantly altered the geology of our planet. Climate change and human engagement with it will determine the future of life on Earth. The urgency of this predicament, although widely perceived and lamented, has yet to yield the kind of global consensus-based actions that existing science tells us will be necessary to reverse, slow, or even successfully adapt to the changes to our world already underway. The concept of the Anthropocene increasingly figures in humanities reaserch, as more scholars join this vast transdisciplinary project to give this topic its due.

We in the humanities know that narratives are not merely instruments of direct, objective communication. We are proficient in the language of stories: we bring our knowledge of aesthetics, representation, and emotional engagement to this endeavour. The stories we tell about our world are important and deserve all the tools at our disposal as we work to shape a sustainable future. Environmental Humanities at NTNU seeks to establish a network for environmental humanities scholars across the disciplines and departments of our institution, and to enable and support the development of research beyond NTNU.

For more information and contacts, see the Environmental humanities web page.

The Media, Data, Museums research group is based in the Department of Art and Media Studies, NTNU. Group members pursue collaborative as well as individual research projects that explore the nexus of media, data, and museums from historical as well as contemporary perspectives.

Media, Data, Museums supports research that engages with historical media, cultural data, and/or museum collections and practices. The group offers a capacious and inclusive umbrella for a wide range of research topics and approaches, and a supportive arena in which to practise research in its many stages, with a particular emphasis on enculturing PhD students.

More information and contact details on The Media, Data, Museums research group's site

This group’s mission is to bridge documentary theory and practice through experimentation. We experiment with theoretical concepts and models to generate new insight into the workings of documentary media in contemporary culture. We engage with creative documentary practices to communicate novel perspectives about the world we live in. At the core of the work conducted at CreaDoc is the idea that creative documentary forms do not only show and tell what has been or what is; they actively shape the limits of the real and push reality to actualise in new ways.

CreaDoc supports the research and creative productions of its members across all documentary media. It hosts symposia, screenings and workshops, and provides an institutional platform for the development of scholarly and artistic projects.

Contact person: Ilona Hongisto

The Norwegian Film and Television group is connected to the Film Studies group at the Department of Art and Media Studies, which has for a long time had a national responsibility to develop and disseminate knowledge about Norwegian movies and Norwegian television's historical and contemporary role in society. The group's members have extensive experience with individual and collective projects connected to film history, aesthetic and theoretical studies of Norwegian film and television.

Our field of research includes studies of specific historical periods, institutional studies, studies of specific genres in film and television, and individual director studies. We welcome projects with thematic, historical or aesthetic approaches connected to these and other relevant fields within older or newer Norwegian film and television.

Potential supervisors:

More information about The Norwegian Film and Television group (in Norwegian)

At NTNU the Research Group for Socially Engaged Art (SEAR) aims to harness the transformative power of art, art-based methods and its inherent values to address pressing issues within our society. Committed to interdisciplinary collaboration, we bring together academics from different departments and faculties that are interested in connecting with practitioners and experts from various fields, offering a supportive community and a forum for exchange and development. We aim to provide opportunities for professional growth, networking, and peer-to-peer mentorship, fostering a research environment where individuals can thrive, collaborate, and make a lasting impact.

SEAR serves as a hub where individuals from different backgrounds converge to explore innovative approaches to societal challenges of our time. Art can, according to Nicolas Bourriaud (2002), function as a social interstice, a place for challenging existing prececonceptions on and around society, identity and politics, through embodied engagement. Likewise, art is a site for potential agonistic pluralism where, according to Chantal Mouffe (2013), the inevitable clash of different political interests can be made visible. By centering on socially engaged art, we strive to create interventions that foster dialogue and critical reflection, inspire empathy, and provoke positive change. Together, we envision a world where art serves as a catalyst for social progress and creativity becomes a tool for empowerment, leading to tangible solutions for the challenges facing contemporary society, among them disintegrating social bonds and communities. The researchers in the group work along different intersections of art – and, bio-diversity, applied ethics, sustainability, technology, pedagogy, psychology, community-building, cultural policy, neuro-science and applied theatre.

Through our projects, initiatives, and partnerships, we aim to cultivate a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable future.

Researchers:

Ine Therese Berg, Associate professor Drama and theatre (IKM), (research group leader)
Heli Aaltonen, Associate professor Drama and theatre (IKM)
Anna Ulrikke Andersen, Associate professor Art history (IKM)
Sophia Efstathiou, Researcher, Department of Philosophy and Religious studies (IFR)
Roxanna Morote, Associate professor Community Psychology (IPS)
Ida Nilstad Pettersen, Professor, Department of Design (ID)
Elena Perez, Associate professor Drama and Theatre (IKM)
Lene Helland Rønningen, Associate professor Drama and Theatre (IKM)
Nora Sørensen Vaage, Associate Professor Media Studies (IKM)
Ruth Woods, Research Scientist, Interdisciplinary Cultural Studies (KULT)

Department of Music

The Research Group in Musicology/Ethnomusicology includes Melania Bucciarelli, Roman Hankeln, Thomas Hilder, John Howland, Nora Bilalovic Kulset, and Tore Størvold, and Tone Åse.

The group’s research spans topics from the Middle Ages to the twenty-first century with specializations in:

Western cultivated/concert music: Italian opera and musical theatre; medieval liturgical vocal music; and German Lieder.
Popular music, jazz studies, and music in media
Music, culture, identity: feminist, queer, postcolonial perspectives
Music and the social sciences (cognition, psychology, health)
Community music, well-being, and applied methods
Ecomusicology and music in the environmental humanities
Artistic research

Contact: Thomas Hilder

Spatiality and site-specific art is at the core of this project; investigating sound, art and architecture in relation to its performance- and/or exhibition space, as well as other possible relations between art and spaces. In better understanding and learn from these relations, we have included a broad interdisciplinary group of artistic researchers that involve most aspects of art practices at NTNU; including music, film and media studies (Faculty of Humanities) and architecture, design and visual arts (Faculty of Architecture and Design).

The title is borrowed from the French philosopher Gaston Bachelard’s book first published in 1958; a poetic investigation of domestic intimate spaces. In this project we wish to investigate the following areas:

Buildings and physical spaces that are either constructed for performance and/or exhibitions, that can be used for the same purpose or are to be considered as art in itself.
Outdoor spaces that are either designed for or can be used in relation to performance, exhibitions or are to be considered as art in its own right. These spaces might be outdoor stages, gardens or marine environments.
Micro spaces and environments. The space inside a musical instrument such as a violin, a matchbox or a ship inside a bottle.
Digital, non-physical and imaginary spaces. These spaces might be recordings of sound and/or image, poetic spaces in literature.
Spaces for health and wellbeing. Immersive art spaces that deals with health challenges.

Michael Duch (project leader)

Department of Language and Literature

In the Language Acquisition and Language Processing Lab we investigate the cognitive and neural bases of human language competence and use, with a focus on syntax, semantics and pragmatics from words to discourse.

The research falls into two broad intersecting areas:

Language acquisition — studying how language and literacy skills change during cognitive development and throughout the lifespan, and how they are modulated or compromised by developmental deficits.

Language processing — studying how spoken and written language comprehension unfold in real time, how they are realised in multiple brain systems, and how they are affected by neurological conditions.

About the Language Acquisition and Language Processing Lab.

Starting from a socio-cultural perspective on language and communication, SKOP's main concern is to understand communicative practices through their context. The research attempts to bridge the gap between communicative practices and the societal discourses that surround them.

SKOP has worked closesly with the health and welfare sector, but projects have also involved industry, the police, higher education, translation and interpreted practice.

SKOP's Norwegian-language web site.

Contact person:

Gøril Thomassen Hammerstad

Literature, Technology and Media is a research group with a common interest in how literature interacts with its medial and technological environments. The relationship between literature, technology and media is extensive and touches on a number of different areas of study: Materially and historically, the group is concerned with how literature has followed the development of writing and printing technologies. In terms of expression, it examines hybrid forms where text, sound and image are combined. Thematically, it focuses on how literary texts portray the relationship between mankind and its media/technologies.

The Norwegian-language web site for Literature, technology and media

Literary and Cultural Eighteenth-Century Studies» (LACES) is an interdisciplinary research group with interests in the connections between literature and cultural history in Europe (with an emphasis on Britain, France, Italy, and Scandinavia) in the long eighteenth century.

Scholars in the group are involved in individual and collaborative projects on, for example:

Literary and cultural representations of European lotteries
Theatre history
Transnational histories of the novel (translation, appropriation, adaptation)
Periodical studies
Book history and print culture
Digital archives

About LACES.

The research group explores representations of next of kin in different media, with emphasis on literature and art, and the group's members are interested in investigating which insights literature and art can give us in issues related to health, care and community. The group also looks at what this perspective on literature and art can highlight about these topics. The group’s primary focus is literary texts (including non-fiction, children's and young adult literature and comics), but is also interested in film, visual arts and other media and art forms. The research group is based on literary studies, but works interdisciplinary and enters into dialogue with research fields such as cultural studies, care ethics, narrative medicine, graphic medicine, humanistic health research (Health/Medical Humanities) and educational research.

Read more about the Research group (in Norwegian)

The focus of ForMAAL is on knowledge of language(s) in the individual, the acquisition of such language(s) in children and in adults, and the nature and form of mental representations of language, grammar and lexicon. Our research into language and linguistics is in large part inspired by the generativist tradition, focusing on the nature of language as a cognitive system internal to the individual which may be, at least in part, governed by innate, biologically-specified and linguistically-specific principles, and which can be modelled in terms of explicit, formally-specified systems.

About ForMAAL

Department of Interdisciplinary Studies of Culture

The Center for Gender Research conducts interdisciplinary and socially relevant research, teaching and dissemination on gender, equality and diversity. The staff has backgrounds from various social sciences and humanities.

Key research areas at the center are:

Biopolitics and reproduction
Ethnicity, gender and equality
Gender, technology and science
Sexuality, gender and culture
Race, Indigeneity and Gender Research Group (RIG).

For more information on the Center for Gender Studies.

With a staff of 40 researchers, the centre is one of the major hubs for Science and Technology Studies (STS) in the Nordic region, and the centre's researchers lead and contribute to major national and international research projects.

A main goal of our research is to illuminate and provide understanding of cultural, political and social features of science and technology in modern society. With this focus we fill a vital scholarly gap overlooked by mainstream humanities and social sciences.

Research areas and interdisciplinary research centres

Read more about the Center for Technology and Society (STS)

Språkvelger

PhD positions at the Faculty of Humanities