Background and experience
- 1987 Cand. Philol (MA in Scandinavian studies)
- 1988-1992 Journalist in the newspaper Fædrelandsvennen
- 1992-2001 Lecturer at Agder University College
- 2001-2009 Associated professor at Agder University College
- 2009- Professor at University of Agder
Areas of responsibility
I am a professor of language and communication at the Department of Nordic and Media Studies at the University of Agder. I am a member of the research group for communication and media studies and I teach subjects that deal with various forms of text and media analysis. I teach at all levels, but most of my teaching is linked to the master's study in Social Communication. My research has for many years been oriented towards studies of genre change and digitalisation. I defended a thesis on news and hypertext in 2001, and since then I have been interested in how digitalisation changes the way we communicate with each other, both in private and professional contexts. I have also researched visual and composite text forms. From 2010-2015 I was part of the steering group for the project Multimodality and cultural change, and in the period 2017-2020 I led an NFR-supported research project on data visualization. In recent years, I have been part of the steering group for the Center for e-health. Here I have investigated how professional health workers use social media to reach out with health advice to their followers.
On-going and concluded projects
- Researcher in the EU-supported project UPSCALE (2024-2027)
- PI in the research project Health experts on social media (2023-2023). funded by The Norwegian Media Authorities (RAM)
- Leader of the research project Innovative Data Visualization and Visual-Numeric Literacy (indvil.org) (2016-2020). The project is supported by the Norwegian Research Council (NFR) and the Norwegian Media Authorities (RAM).
Teaching
Teaching areas
- Theory/analysis of language and text
- Theory/analysis of media and communication
- Multimodality
- Visual communication
- Digital communication
Research
Research areas
- Text and discourse studies
- Multimodality and visual communication
- Digitalization of genres
- Journalism
- Rhetorics
- Health communication
- Digitalisation in museums