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  

Read more about Music as a health resource and therapy

Read more about The Portfolio Musician

Read more about Musicology Research Group: Music, Society, Culture

Read more about R&D Group in Music Technology

Cognition, Meaning and Reality consist of:

• Agency, Action and Embodiment (AAE) - NTNU
• Research group for Consciousness, Cognition and Reality (CCR) - IFR - NTNU
• Research Group for Experimental Philosophy of Language (EXLANG) - NTNU

The research group in practical philosophy does research in practical philosophy in a broad sense, but with special emphasis on ethics and political philosophy.

The members of the research group have comprehensive proficiency in philosophy and interdisciplinary research.
 

The group’s research interests include value theory, normative ethics, political philosophy, and metaethics, and include topics such as: Animal ethics, bioethics, corporate social responsibility, environmental philosophy, ethics of technology, feminist philosophy, medical ethics, needs, philosophy of education, republicanism, responsible research and innovation, theory of democracy, and trust.

The research group meets regularly to discuss its members’ research. We also organize a yearly workshop with presentations and discussion.

Members of the research group (site in Norwegian).

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

Read more about AEP

The research group in aesthetics and phenomenology consists of researchers and graduate students in aesthetics, phenomenology, hermeneutics, and existentialism. The aim is to develop and improve the research within these research areas at NTNU, in collaboration with national and international research partners.

Relevant research areas include, but are not limited to:

• Phenomenology versus hermeneutics as methods
• Perception and vision
• Perception, language, and art
• Historicity and experience of time
• Phenomenology in science
• Intersubjectivity and ethics
• Body and self
• Aesthetics, aisthesis and the everyday
• Aesthetics of nature
• Psychoanalysis and Enactivism

Read more about  Aesthetics and Phenomenology

We welcome researchers interested in social and political philosophy with a focus on differences in society. These differences can address class, gender, racialization, disability, sexuality, justice and equality, and global imperialism and can be presented from philosophical perspectives such as phenomenology, political theory, critical theory, critical social theory, existentialism, history of philosophy, or other related schools of thought.

The group seeks to enable and strengthen dialogue within the department, across universities, and with other fields of study working on these questions. The group’s main goal is to provide an organized framework for researchers working on feminist philosophy in a broad sense, enabling members to share, discuss and advance both theoretical and empirical research on these shared topics.

The Research Group organizes workshops, paper presentations, reading sessions and seminars. The group consists mainly of faculty at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies, NTNU. Masters students are also very welcome to attend.

In addition to providing a forum for discussion of issues within identities of difference and oppression, we arrange guest lectures, assist each other in our individual writing projects, and work on collaborative project proposals. We collaborate with Forum for Feminist Philosophy at the Department, and the interdisciplinary NTNU Gender Hub.

Read more about FDP

CONNOR (Nordic Network of Conspiracy Theories Research)

CONNOR is a network for academic research on conspiracy theories. The group seeks to develop and strengthen the interdisciplinary study of conspiracy theories with a particular focus on the historical and contemporary Nordics (countries of the Nordic Council) within the global flow of conspiracy narratives.

We are broadly interested in the expressions, antecedents and consequences of conspiracy theories, as well as re-search into possible remedial activities relating to beliefs. We welcome participants from all relevant academic fields. The network is open to researchers in the Nordics who study conspiracy theories in general, and to international researchers who study conspiracy theories in or about the Nordics.

Current research areas

• Mapping the prevalence and predictors of conspiracy beliefs in the Nordic countries.
• The weaponization of conspiracy beliefs in mis- and disinformation activities, with special focus on Covid-19 and on the Russian war against Ukraine.
• Conspiracy theories and adolescence, relating especially to how to address conspiracy theories in educational settings.
• Media and conspiracy theories

In order to apply for PhD-positions at the Faculty of Humanities connected to this group, candidates must be hosted by and have a main supervisor at the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies.

Contact person: Asbjørn Dyrendal

Conspiracy theories have shown to breed distrust and hatred, weaken critical thinking and democratic engagement. They are also tied to social withdrawal and weakened mental health. This research group looks at conspiracy thinking in Norwegian schools and among Norwegian youth.

Contact person: Asbjørn Dyrendal

More about KONSPISK (in Norwegian)

Read more about the Research group for Applied ethics (RAPP)

Read more about the Ancient Philosophy Research Group

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

• Kristian Steinnes
• Hans Otto Frøland
• Mats Ingulstad

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*
Marco Parluhutan

Research includes several areas and ongoing projects:

1. Political economy/Resource economy/Living standard and education/Poverty and inequality
2. Resources and societal development in a global perspective
3. National regulations
4. European integration and international institutions
5. Norwegian multinational companies
6. 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:

• Hans Otto Frøland
• Pål Thonstad Sandvik
• Jonas Scherner
• Espen Storli
• Francisco Beltrán Tapia
• Mats Ingulstad

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.

Potential supervisors:

• Hans Otto Frøland
• Mats Ingulstad
• Øyvind Thomassen

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, palaeogenomics, 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:

• Hans Otto Frøland
• Maria Fritsche

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:

• Øyvind Thomassen
• Francisco Beltrán Tapia
• Karl Erik Haug
• Maria Fritsche

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.”

Read more about Mission Mjøsa

Potential supervisors:

• Espen Storli
• Mats Ingulstad
• Pål Thonstad Sandvik

The research group includes scholars from VM, IV, NV, and SU.

The research group "Museology and Museum Research" is based on grassroots research in the humanities (citizen humanities) and practice research in close collaboration with museums and other cultural heritage institutions. Grassroots research in the humanities produces knowledge about the past and present with the participation of individuals and groups in society.

Practice research produces knowledge by uniting the work of the hand and thought as a research method in fields of practice. The research group's focus is grassroots research in the humanities and practice research that takes place in museum work, such as craft work, curatorial work and dissemination and management work.

The purpose of the research group is to support and develop museological research and museum research in the form of 1) grassroots research in the humanities that takes place in the area between the museum sector and the university and university college sector; 2) practical research that takes place in and through various forms of museum work; 3) historical and theoretical investigations of the above research practices.

For more information, see the group's website

Contacts:

Mattias Bäckström

Insa Müller

In today’s world, resources and economic preparedness have become increasingly important in global politics. Over the past 15 years, major actors such as the EU, the USA, and China have developed new strategies to protect themselves against declining access to resources in critical areas such as food supply, industrial production, and minerals essential for the green transition.

For Norway, this brings a range of new challenges—from weakened international trade systems to land-use conflicts, for example between Indigenous communities and projects related to mining or renewable energy.

This shifting geopolitical landscape highlights the need for Norway and NTNU to explore how improved resource planning and management can strengthen the country’s economy and security.

The Resources Research Group is well equipped to address these challenges. The group brings together expertise from a wide range of disciplines, including geology, social sciences, and the humanities, to shed light on both national and international dimensions of resource management. Their work spans from fundamental geological research to studies of policies related to resource use, industrial growth, international regulations, and preparedness for crises such as war or natural disasters.

Potential supervisors:

• Espen Storli
• Hans Otto Frøland
• Jonas Scherner
• Madeleine Dungy
• Mats Ingulstad
• Pål Thonstad Sandvik

The research group includes scholars from VM, IV, NV, and SU.

Southern Sami history has been controversial – and little explored. Our ambition is to analyse the development of South Sami society and its interaction and conflicts with the Norwegian majority society. This includes political governance, management of natural resources, law enforcement, religion, military relations and the development of a South Sami identity.

Potential supervisors:

• Pål Thonstad Sandvik
• Espen Storli

Political history concerns power and the exercise of power. What is the basis for and consequences of power, who decides and how is power exercised?

For more information, contact potential supervisors:

• Pål Thonstad Sandvik
• Espen Storli
• Karl Erik Haug
• Hans Otto Frøland
• Kristian Steinnes

In order to be able to solve the sustainability challenges, we must understand how they have arisen, how they have been dealt with in the past, and how current thinking on sustainability has developed. Within this area we look at the interaction between culture, politics, technology and business.

1) Memories and myths on sustainability

2) The ocean and its resources

3) Mission Mjøsa

For more information, contact potential supervisors:

• Ingar Kaldal
• Espen Storli
• Mats Ingulstad
• Hans Otto Frøland

The group's main focus is on the intersection of art and politics in the two "classical" eras of antiquity and the 1700s, and develops a common research method around what the group calls recreations of various research objects, primarily music through performances and texts through re-creations, often published in the Kanon series, a collaboration between NTNU and Gyldendal Norsk Forlag under Thorsen's leadership.

Kanon-series

The sister festivals S.P.O.R and Barokkfest function as the research group's combined laboratory and dissemination platform. The group includes a Marie Curie fellow and several fellows and researchers.

Co-leads: Thea Selliaas Thorsen and Martin Wåhlberg.

Contact person at IHK: Thea Selliaas Thorsen

The Iron Age to Historical Archaeology Research Group (IAHA) strives to increase the use of interdisciplinarity to answer archaeological questions between the Early Iron Age and recent history. It includes and bridges the traditional subdisciplines of later prehistoric, Viking Age, Medieval and Historical Archaeology.

The research group focuses on connectivity and transformation, including key topics such as: environmental change, agrarian economies, the importance of natural (mountain, forest and marine) resources, human-wildlife interactions, monetisation, urban living, health, rural-urban networks (at scales ranging from the local to global), religious practises and social stability/instability.

IAHA has very active collaborations with the National Laboratory for Age Determination and also works closely with the Department of Natural History. It has strong intra-departmental cooperation with the Environmental Archaeology Group and TEMAR.

It has extensive national and international collaborations and welcomes overtures for future cooperative research projects. Key areas of methodological expertise include field archaeology, maritime archaeology (including the use of autonomous vehicles), material culture studies, remote sensing (including drone-based LiDAR), dendrochronology, radiocarbon dating, stable isotope analysis, ancient DNA and zooarchaeology.

Intellectually, IAHA seeks to combine strong traditions of field archaeology, material culture studies, archaeological theory, text-based research and archaeological science in order to answer pressing questions of past and contemporary relevance, ranging from anthropogenic environmental impacts, to the distinctive foundations of economic life in the north, to the symbolic construction of community. 
 
Contacts: Martin Callanan, Ingrid Ystgaard. 
 
IAK: James Barrett, Terje Brattli, Danielle Buss, Carmen Cuenca-Garcia, Katrien Dierickx, Monica Nordanger Enehaug, Silje Fretheim, Geir Grønnesby, Torkel Johansen, Birgit Maixner, Ole Risbøl, Jon Anders Risvaaag, Bernt Rundberget, Raymond Sauvage, Fredrik Skoglund.
 
The group has monthly meetings and seminars with internal and external contributors two to four times per semester.

The research group is working to understand how war (and civil war) has arisen, the nature of the conflicts and their consequences, in an interaction between political, technological, economic and social phenomena. More than the course of the war, the research is generally concerned with understanding the social conditions and social effects of war in the short and long term. Within this perspective is included memory studies and studies of the function of narratives.

The research activity is linked to several ongoing projects and themes:

•    World War 1 and World War 2 and their effects
•    Occupation studies
•    Norwegian foreign and security policy
•    International organizations
•    Economic warfare: resources and war
•    Blockade as a strategy and its effects

Potential supervisors:

• Maria Fritsche
• Jonas Scherner
• Hans Otto Frøland
• Karl Erik Haug

Members:

Francisco J. Beltrán Tapia, Department of Historical Sciences, NTNU

Pål Thonstad Sandvik, Department of Historical Sciences, NTNU

Eftychia Kalaitzidou, Department of Historical Sciences, NTNU

Elise Barring Berggren, Department of Historical Sciences, NTNU

Charles Butcher, Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU

Kristin Ranestad, Department of History, UiO

Gregory Fergusson-Cradler, Department of Law, Philosophy and International Studies, INN

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 research, 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

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)

Read more about SEAR

Recent developments in machine learning and artificial intelligence are rapidly transforming contemporary media cultures. Text-to-image models and related generative AI tools (text-to-video, text-to-music, text-to-code) are currently changing the ways people around the globe communicate and create media content. Large language models are similarly shifting the ways people learn and gain knowledge.

The AI Media research group investigates the transformative effects of machine learning and generative AI on media and society.

AI-powered media applications are complex socio-technical configurations that challenge the existing explanatory frameworks of media theory. Understanding the technological workings and societal impacts of these applications calls for transdisciplinary frameworks and new critical vocabularies. This includes developing knowledges about practices and conventions that transform technologies into media forms. The overall research goal of the AI Media research group is to develop such much-needed frameworks, vocabularies, and knowledges.

Read More about AI Media

Read more about The Film Research Group 

Read more about Kunstnerisk forskningslab 

Read more about Reflexive Dramaturgy

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.

Read more about Literature as a Social Resource

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 closely 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

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

Read more about the Song Studies Research Group

Read more about Visceral Writing and Affect Transmission as Feminist Strategy 

Read more about SOCIAL – Semiotics Of Communication In interActive Languaging - NTNU

Les meir om Språklege økologiar – norsk(e) språk i tid og rom (in Norwegian only)

Read more about Omskrivingens politikk og poetikk (In Norwegian only)

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

• Biopolitics and reproduction
• Energy, climate and environment
• History of science and technology
• Digitalization and robotization of society
• The good infrastructures lab
• Advanced Studies of Knowledge
• Gender, Science and Technology

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