Background and experience
I began my academic career as a Ph.D student in history at the University of Agder in 2022, where I have been developing my research project tentatively titled Imagining and Reimagining Belonging: The Foreign Workers’ Associations Political Project in the 1970s and 1980s (For more information, see below). In April 2023, I undertook a research stay at the Global Intellectual History graduate school at the Friedrich Meinecke Institute of History, Universität Berlin. This research stay provided a stimulating intellectual environment and deepened my understanding of global intellectual history, offering a solid foundation in research and theory. My academic journey began at the University of Oslo, where I completed my bachelor’s degree in history and my master’s in Modern International and Transnational History. These experiences have shaped my approach to history, particularly by integrating post-colonial theory and transnational and global history frameworks—perspectives that inform my current research.
Other relevant experience:
Intern at the Norwegian Embassy in Ankara, Turkey (2019)
Intern at Peace Labs in Beirut, Lebanon (2019)
Research Assistant, University of Tromsø, Norway 2021
Editorial Member, Tidsskriftet LatinAmerika (2021-2022)
Areas of responsibility
I am a historian specializing in modern migration history, focusing on the political activities of multinational migrant organizations in Norway and Western Europe between 1970 and 1990. My ongoing doctoral dissertation examines how the Foreign Workers’ Association in Norway constructed and promoted ideas of belonging during this period, exploring how this organization navigated issues of identity, inclusion, and political engagement within both the host society and transnational networks (for more information, see below).
Research
In 1971, the Foreign Workers Association emerged as the first multinational migrant association in Norway in response to the increasing arrival of migrant workers from so-called non-Western countries in the late sixties and early seventies. In its goal to unite the various migrant communities, the association constructed and developed a project of multinational belonging through collective narratives, visual representations, and the production of social spaces. This project seeks to understand how this political project of belonging emerged, developed, and manifested itself through two crucial decades of increasing cultural diversity in Norway and Western Europe. By analyzing textual and visual sources produced by the association and its members individually, by conducting oral history interviews with former activists, and by studying government documents, this research illustrates how the politics of belonging unified, challenged, and disrupted ideas of multinational belonging in Norway. Its findings aim to contribute to the ongoing research on belonging in multicultural societies. By foregrounding the voices of migrant activists and migrant right activists, the study seeks to present the ways in which they imagined belonging in multicultural societies.
Projects
- Tentative title: Imagining and Reimagining Belonging: The Foreign Workers Associations’ Political Project in the 1970s and 1980s