Researchers to Watch

Research and innovation yield knowledge and expertise that matters when important decisions are to be made. Meet some of our up-and-coming researchers in the interviews below.

Updated: 12.10.2020 (First published: 22.09.2016)

Politics as profession

Professor Ragnhild Muriaas at the University of Bergen started her working career as a DJ. Now she investigates what strings must be played in politics to make a footprint.

Making research matter

Applied mathematician Inga Berre is drawn to solving problems, and enjoys being in for the long haul in cracking them.

Åslaug Ommundsen professor i middelalderlatin

Manuscripts that link Europe together

“I never tire of studying medieval manuscripts. Even though my source material is Norwegian, it is also fundamentally international. This gives the research a broader perspective and forces international cooperation.”

Portrait of Benjamin Pfeil, leader of the Bjerknes Climate Data Centre at the University of Bergen

Providing data to save our ocean

Reporting on ocean acidification data directly targeting the Sustainable Development Goals is all in a day’s work for Benjamin Pfeil and his data group at the University of Bergen.

Doing time for the climate

According to Håvard Haarstad, scientists have to commit to doing everything they can to get society moving in the right direction. His own commitment to saving the world earned him a night in prison in New York.

Criminal Law: Work that never ends

As a student, Jørn Jacobsen encountered Norwegian criminal law – and he never got over it, or past it. The recruitment scholarship from the Trond Mohn Foundation gave him the opportunity to delve more deeply into issues involving power, criminal offences, freedom and penology.

New method developed to analyse social media

Do you know where the personal data you leave behind in apps and on social media is used? A new method for analyzing data developed by Professor Jill Walker Rettberg helps identify precisely that.

Karsten Specht, IBMP, Det psykologiske fakultet

Fascinated by the brain

When Karsten Specht came into contact with brain researchers and language therapists working with aphasia patients, things began to happen.

How to live with rapid seasonal change

How can we live by the rhythms of the seasons, when these rhythms seem to be changing quickly? Scott Bremer is looking at how rapid seasonal changes are affecting institutions in society and how we can re-learn and adapt to seasonal change in new ways.

Examining lung health from the mouth

Researcher Randi Jacobsen Bertelsen at Department of Clinical Science is in the final round to achieve a prestigious EU-grant. Her project aims to discover how oral hygiene is linked to lung health.

A question of accountability

On Friday 22 July 2011, Norway was hit by a terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 77 people. The terrorist attack was not only a national trauma. The case also made apparent that the legal system needs a better understanding of how criminal insanity and mental disorder are related.

Lessons from the past

For many years, the University of Bergen has focused on historical and archaeological research in the Middle East and in Syria in particular. How is the research going forward despite the difficult situation in the region?

Anna Szolucha, Department of Social Anthropology, University of Bergen (UiB), photographed in March 2017.

Dealing with the future of energy

In her new project, social anthropologist Anna Szolucha wants to look at citizen engagement in climate and energy transformation. In particular, she asks: how do you involve people from the bottom and up?

Portrait of Postdoctoral fellow Marija Slavkovik, Department of Information Science and Media Studies, University of Bergen (UiB).

In love with the machines

Marija Slavkovik has always been attracted to machines. In fact, she has turned artificial intelligence into the core theme of her research.

Political scientist Yvette Peters from the University of Bergen photographed in Bergen’s City Hall in March 2017.

Fighting for democracy

Thomas Piketty's bestseller about capitalism made it clear to Yvette Peters what her next research project would focus on: political inequality.