Academic interests
I'm interested in how knowledge and knowledge practices shape not just the way we think about the world, but the actual (and even material) world we live in. While the most prominent example of this in politics is our state bureaucracy, I'm especially interested in how knowledge shapes our society in more fragmented and cultural ways.
Currently, I'm part of the project Value threads, led by Professor Kristin Asdal, which aims to provide a better understanding of the valuation practices and technologies that underpin efforts to transform our economy into a "green", low-emissions economy, and to combine financial return with other values. Within this frame, my project investigates actors under the umbrella of "green finance" and more particularly how these actors work on the climate issue through the notion of "climate risk". My thesis is supervised by Kristin Asdal (TIK, UiO) and Liliana Doganova (CSI, École des mines, Paris).
Finance has in the past few years come out as an environmental agent, called on by the latest COP climate conferences and large intergovernmental agents such as The European Investment Bank and The World Bank, who talk about an “investment gap”, which needs to be filled to fund the green transition. As a central part of the European Green Deal, the EU taxonomy aims to provide a guide for «green investing» by defining some things as green and others not. The financial sector has conversely answered the call with institutional investors and banks building large departments for investing green. Regulatory agents such as central banks have on their side included climate change into their mandates and work to manage the risk climate change is thought to pose to the stability of global financial systems – a "climate risk".
What is this ‘new’ and ‘green’ finance sector? In what ways and by which tools does it operate? Today, there is extensive struggle to define what the climate issue should be about, who should work on it, by which means. When more and more actors want to work on “the green” and “do good”, I take outset from the concern that critical attention is required to investigate how these negotiations change the political landscape and have important political and environmental consequences. Understanding this new "green finance" sector is part of a greater interest in understanding new economic initiatives that tries to combine economic value with other values, and a strategy of studying economic practices as culture.
In the winter and spring of 2023, I was a visiting researcher at the Centre de Sociologie de l'Innovation (CSI), at École des mines in Paris.
Teaching
Spring semester 2022:
TIK4011: Science and Technology in Politics and Society
TIK4040: Research and Design Seminar
Autumn semester 2023:
TIK4001: Teknologi, innovasjon og kunnskap
Spring semester 2024:
TIK4011: Science and Technology in Politics and Society
Background
I have a Bachelor's degree in Mathematics and a Master's degree in Philosophy, both from the University of Copenhagen, where I graduated in early 2017. Initially oriented towards the Philosophy of Science, I wrote my bachelor's theses in the Philosophy of Mathematics about how images and metaphors aid and shape mathematical thinking. At a master's level I worked with subjects related to political philosophy, cultural theory, theories on the welfare state and the public sphere.
Before starting my PhD, I worked for several years as a journalist, writing for the Norwegian national newspapers Dagens Næringsliv, Morgenbladet and Klassekampen. For several years, I was also part of the editorial staff at the Danish review of books, ATLAS.
Many of my different interests align in the field of STS, where I am especially interested in how knowledge is formed and what role it plays in our society – both in a technical sense but also where there is controversy. I enjoy interdisciplinary fields for many reasons, but especially because it allows for a broader scope of issues to be considered relevant research questions, something I view as crucial to study and understand our contemporary society.