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Johanne Emilie Christensen

PhD Research Fellow Department of Nordic and Media Studies

Email: johanne.e.christensen@uia.no
Phone: +47 38 14 27 10
Office: D3044B (Universitetsveien 25, 4630 Kristiansand, Norway)

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Background and experience

2025- : PhD candidate at the University of Agder.

2023-2025: Lecturer at the Center for Gender Research, University of Oslo.

KFL2060/4060 Gender Equality in the Nordic Countries (seminar leader and guest lecturer)
ISSHF2060/4060 Gender Equality in the Nordic Countries/ISSHF2020 Gender Equality in the Nordic Countries (course leader)
KFL2032/4032 Seksualitetsstudier og kjønn (guest lecturer)

2024-2025: Research assistant. BærUt! Network and Skills Hub for Sustainable Digital Scholarly Editions, University of Oslo University Library

2021-2023: Master's degree. Gender Studies, Centre for Gender Studies, University of Oslo

MA thesis: Crushing Utopia - A Study of Queer Desire, Power, and Gender Norms in Helen Sandler’s Erotic Novel Big Deal.

2020-2021: Interdisciplinary gender studies and history of ideas. University of Oslo.

2019-2020: History. University of Agder.

2014-2017: Bachelor’s degree. English literature. University of Winchester.

Areas of responsibility

Committees

Kjønnsforskning NÅ! 2025, Oslo, 5-6 June.

Research

About the Ph.D. project

The project "Side by side? Queer parents in Scandinavian TV and film" examines the representation of queer parents in Norwegian and Swedish series/films within the comedy-drama genre. Based on cultural theory, queer and feminist theory, the project will examine how queer parents' cultural recognition can be understood in light of citizenship, homotolerance and equality ideals.

Research groups

Publications

Other

Christensen, Johanne Emilie (2026). Trans childhood and coming-out in Hør Her’a. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
A brave feelgood film daring to raise important questions about growing up trans, and the potential for a happy ending through family and acceptance..
Christensen, Johanne Emilie (2026). Are We Lost Forever? Queer representation in Norwegian-Swedish TV and films. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
“Are we lost forever?” the couple Hampus and Adrian ask each other in the 2020 film of the same name. Although they use the statement to question their relationship, the same question can be asked about the representation of queer characters in Norwegian and Swedish film and TV. Queer characters have been present in film and TV for a long time, but in the Norwegian and Swedish film and TV landscape it is still difficult to get an overview of where they are, and what queer representation looks like visually and contextually. In this presentation, I will discuss the preliminary results from my Ph.D. project in which I, among other things, map queer representation in general within Norwegian and Swedish feature films and fictional TV series between 1990 and 2025. I will explain methodological choices, and how I have chosen categories to capture queer representation. Finally, I will discuss what trends the mapping shows and how the findings illuminate questions related to cultural queer representation theoretically; and most importantly, what we can learn about the scope for queer cultural representation in a Norwegian/Swedish context.
Christensen, Johanne Emilie (2026). Queer Domesticity in the Mainstream Imagination: Queer representation in film and on TV in Norway and Sweden. Full text in Research Archive Show summary
The family plays an important role in Norwegian and Swedish mainstream comedy and crime film and TV, both in the plot and for the setting. As a part of my ph.d. project, focusing on the representation of queer parents in Norwegian and Swedish TV and film genres crime and comedy, I address the question of cultural recognition of queer parents in Norway and Sweden through the lens of mainstream culture. I am using genre to question queer parents’ opportunities within the most popular TV and film in Norway and Sweden, and how these representations can be understood in light of the notion of homotolerance, cultural recognition and chrononormativity. In this paper I will present a mapping of queer representation in Norwegian and Swedish film and TV between 1990 and 2025, to shed light on how "ordinary" the lives of queer parents can be in the mainstream imagination. The mapping is created by collecting data from blogs, IMDB-lists, and previous research. The findings are categorised by various tropes associated with queer representation in film and on TV. From this I am documenting the presence of queer characters and themes associated with queer lives in Norwegian and Swedish film and TV, to shed light on how queer parents and families are included/excluded from the mainstream notion of domesticity.
Christensen, Johanne Emilie (2025). Ambiguous desire: A study of Norwegian journalists' use of the term "husmorporno". Full text in Research Archive
Aurora, Federico; Christensen, Johanne Emilie & Rockenberger, Annika (2024). BærUt! Network and Skills Hub for Sustainable Digital Scholarly Editions at the University of Oslo. Full text in Research Archive
Rockenberger, Annika; Christensen, Johanne Emilie; Foldvik, Therese; Stauder, Andy; Kaukonen, Minna & Ólafsson, Bragi Þorgrímur [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2024). Collaborative Infrastructure as a Disruptive Force for Interdisciplinary Digital Scholarship, Illustrated by Use Cases of the Transkribus Stakeholder Platform. Full text in Research Archive
Rockenberger, Annika; Christensen, Johanne Emilie & Aurora, Federico (2024). 404 Not Found. Dire Straits and Safe Havens for Digital Scholarly Editions in Norway. Full text in Research Archive
Christensen, Johanne Emilie (2024). Skeiv lesning av lesbisk erotikk. Blikk. ISSN 0803-141X. Full text in Research Archive
Christensen, Johanne Emilie (2024). Skeiv lesning av lesbisk erotikk. Kilden kjønnsforskning. Full text in Research Archive

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Published Feb. 3, 2025 5:53 AM - Last modified Mar. 9, 2026 10:08 AM