Researchers
The core research group consists of researchers in different careers stages who are trained mainly in social anthropology, sociology, legal studies, gender studies, philosophy and human geography.
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Christine M. Jacobsen
Christine M. Jacobsen is Professor of Social Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK), and the project leader for the WAIT project. Jacobsen works mainly in the fields of Gender Studies and International Migration and Ethics Relations. Her works has focused on issues related to Muslim minorities in France and Norway, and in particular on continuities and changes in gendered religious traditions, identities and practices in a context of international migration and secular modernity. For this current project her focus is irregularised migrants in Marseille, France.
Shahram Khosravi
Shahram Khosravi is Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Stockholm. His research interest include anthropology of Iran and the Middle East, and he has for many years studied and written about migration, diaspora, borders, illegality and deportation. One of Khosravi's most recent books, Precarious Lives (2017), addresses issues of contemporary Iranian everyday life, hope, and how current socio-political processes leave people in a place of spatial and social immobility.
Marry-Anne Karlsen
Marry-Anne Karlsen is a postdoctoral fellow at the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK), and senior researcher at Uni Research Rokkan Centre. She has a background in both human geography and social anthropology. Her research interests cover migration, welfare state, and border politics. Her PhD thesis Precarious inclusion. Irregular migration, practices of care and state b/ordering in Norway explored the encounter between health care providers and irregular migrants and was part of the project Provision of Welfare to Irregular Migrants.
Randi Gressgård
Randi Gressgård is a Professor of Gender Research in the Social Sciences at the Centre for Women’s and Gender Research (SKOK), and affiliated with the research unit International Migration and Ethnic Relations (IMER). Her scientific production combines sociological approaches with social anthropology, human geography, critical political theory and continental philosophy. Her research interests are migrations and minority studies, such as multiculturalism, post-colonialism, citizenship, democracy, borders and boundaries, nationalism and geo-politics, and gender and sexuality studies.
Karl Harald Søvig
Karl Harald Søvig is Professor and Dean at the Faculty of Law, UiB. His research interests cover social law, health and welfare, constitutional law and administrative law. Søvig is also leader of the Research School in Law at the University of Bergen, a member of the editorial board of a Norwegian Law Journal (Tidsskrift for arverett, familierett og barnevernrettslige spørsmål), and was previously part of the project Provision of Welfare to Irregular Migrants. Søvig has also been acting judge in the district court and court of appeal in Norway.
Thomas Hylland Eriksen
Thomas Hylland Eriksen is a Professor at the Department of Social Anthropology, University of Oslo. He has for many years studied and written about migration, identity politics, ethnicity, nationalism and globalisation from a comparative perspective. From 2012 to 2017, Eriksen worked on the ERC funded research project Overheating: The Three Crises of Globalisation’, which attempted to study and analyse globalisation 'from below'. His recent book Boomtown: Runaway Globalisation on the Queensland Coast (2018) is published as a part of the the Overheating project. He has also published popular books, textbooks, polemical books and essays on a variety of topics. From 2015 to 2016, Eriksen served President of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA). Click here to hear Hylland Eriksen talk about "WAIT".
Odin Lysaker
Odin Lysaker is Professor of Ethics at the Department of Religion, Philosophy, and History, University of Agder. Although Lysaker works broadly in the areas of ethics, political philosophy, and social philosophy, his current main fields of research cover migration and human rights, health and development, democracy and free speech, as well as climate issues. As from 2013, Lysaker has been part of the NECORE project (Negotiating Values – Collective Identities and Resilience in Post-Terror Norway) at PRIO (Peace Research Institute Oslo).
Kari Anne K. Drangsland
Kari Anne Drangsland is the PhD candidate in the WAIT project. Her research interests include migration, bordering processes, urban planning and development. She has a MA degree in Human Geography from the University of Bergen. The thesis examines what happens when the discourse of social integration is embedded in an urban planning discourse, and how integration measures take the form of spatial organisation at the neighbourhood level. She is also co-author of a chapter in the book Nordic work with traumatised refugees: Do we really care (2014) called "The conditions for hospitality in the Norwegian asylum reception system".
Jessica Schultz
Jessica Schultz is a Postdoctoral fellow at the Faculty of Law (UiB). She specialises in international refugee law and human rights law. Her project explores how refugee law and policy structure time. How do factors like age, length of residence, connections with other countries, imminence of harm, and durability of protection determine who can access or remain in a state? How do current policies and practices extend the protracted nature of displacement for many refugees? In particular she investigates various dimensions of what is called the ‘return turn’ in refugee law and policy.