Professor Kristin Skare Orgeret co-leads the MEKK research group with Professor Roy Krøvel. She has held a professorial position at Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet) since 2013 and has extensive experience in journalism, teaching, and research across several African and Asian countries over many years.
Kristin leads the projects Safety Matters (INTPART), Expanding Horizons in Journalism and Media Studies (NORPART), the latter in collaboration with Roy Krøvel, and Common Frontlines and Democracy, with Ukraine, with Krøvel and Oleksandra Hrybenko. Kristin serves as a member of the Norwegian Research Council’s Board on Democracy and Global Development and sits on several international editorial boards. She is a frequent commentator in Norwegian media and has received the Norwegian Media Researchers’ Dissemination Award (2016) and OsloMet’s Dissemination Award (2022).
Professor Roy Krøvel heads the MEKK research group together with Kristin Skare Orgeret. His PhD was on the relationship between media, armed movements and indigenous peoples in Mexico and Central America. Krøvel is currently Professor of Journalism at Oslo Metropolitan University and Adjunct Professor at Sámi University of Applied Sciences. He was Adjunct Professor in Latin American Area Studies, University of Oslo (2014-2015).
Krøvel heads the Norhed II project (2021-2026) in Colombia and Nicaragua, with Universidad Autónoma Indígena Intercultural og Universidad de las Regiones Autónomas de la Costa Caribe Nicaragüense. He also heads the projects Safety Matters (Intpart) and Expanding Horizons in Journalism and Media Studies (Norpart) with Kristin Orgeret. Krøvel has worked for solidarity organizations in Nicaragua, El Salvador and elsewhere and is a civil engineer educated in environmental risk analysis.
Trond Idås is a PhD Fellow at Åbo Akademi University, Finland, and a special advisor on safety, trauma and working environment for the Norwegian Union of Journalists (NUJ). His research focus is on post-traumatic stress and post-traumatic stress related to safety, threats and hate speech. He has been working on these topics for NUJ, UNESCO and the Council of Europe. Trond is part of the Safety Matters Project and teaches and gives trainings in safety and trauma at several schools of journalism and conferences/seminars for professional journalists. He is a former news journalist.
Melike İşleyen is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University. Their research interests include the mediation of gendered life and death, as well as the normalisation of violence as a gendered and racialised phenomenon, examined through decolonial, feminist, and Indigenous perspectives, with a particular focus on visual cultures of dissent.
They hold a BA in Guidance and Psychological Counselling and an MSc in Trauma and Disaster Mental Health. During their second master’s degree in Ethnic and Migration Studies at Linköping University, their work expanded from psychotherapeutic approaches to a broader understanding of healing, visual cultures, and (in)justice as interconnected processes shaped by—and capable of contesting—modernity/coloniality. Their ongoing doctoral project focuses on the coloniality of visuality and the emancipatory potential of decolonial aesthetics/aesthesis to challenge the logic of settler colonial elimination, working toward decolonial ends in Palestine and beyond.
Oleksandra Hrybenko is a PhD candidate, researcher, and coordinator within the project Shared Frontlines and Democracy at OsloMet. Her research examines the impact of war on Ukrainian journalism, focusing on change and continuity in the journalistic field, with particular attention to the safety of women journalists and fixers, as well as the role of media-focused NGOs. Within the framework of the project, she collaborates with Norwegian and Ukrainian partners to enhance knowledge about Ukraine in Norway, foster cooperation between Ukrainian and Norwegian journalists, and counter Russian disinformation.
Patrick Kollman is a filmmaker, journalist, PhD candidate, and assistant professor in Journalism and Media Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University. He holds a master’s degree in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, and worked for a decade making documentary and feature films before relocating to Norway. His PhD research examines the emergence of geospatial AI in investigative journalism, with a focus on uncovering environmental and social injustices and on developing inclusive practices that integrate diverse perspectives and forms of knowledge.
Samba Dialimpa Badji is a Research Fellow in the DD-MAC project and PhD candidate at Oslomet University. He holds a master’s degree in Defence Peace and Security and a BA in journalism. Before joining DD-MAC, Samba worked for Africa Check, a fact-checking organisation working on tackling misinformation and promoting media literacy. Samba has worked as a journalist for several media outlets in Senegal and for the French service of the BBC. Samba’s research focuses on the role of digital media in the armed conflicts in Ethiopia and Mali. He is interested in understanding how digital media affect the way the armed conflicts in Ethiopia and Mali are portrayed and how disinformation and hate speech are propagated, as well as their impact on the conflict.
Anne Hege Simonsen is Head of Department and Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Oslo Metropolitan University. Simonesen is a social anthropologist and a former journalist and editor and holds a PHD in visual studies. She is author and co-author of several academic and non-fiction books. Her fields of interest are migration, transnationalism, minorities, walls/borders, photography, foreign reporting and journalism education.
Professor Emeritus Rune Ottosen has written extensively on press history and media coverage of war and conflict. He is co-author with Stig Arne Nohrstedt of several books, and has been a guest researcher and lecturer to a number of universities in Norway and internationally.
Professor Emerita Elisabeth Eide has published a large number of academic, non-fiction, and fiction books. Her particular areas of research interest are transnational journalism studies. She has travelled throughout Afghanistan and its region.
Elsebeth Frey is at Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University. She has been a journalist for 25 years in print and online media. Her main research interests are crisis journalism and trauma, press freedom and safety for journalists, core values in journalism, online journalism and social media. Her research has been published in Norwegian, Nordic and American journals as well as in international and Tunisian research anthologies.
Bjørn Westlie is Associate Professor at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Oslo Metropolitan University. He is a former journalist with 30 years of experience in newspapers such as Klassekampen, Folkevett, Liv, helse og sosialmagasin, and Dagens Næringsliv. His main focus as a researcher and historian are the untold aspects of the Second World War, particularly in investigating how basic structures of patriotic storytelling have influenced how the story about Second World War in Norway has been told during the war, and after. Bjørn has written four books with this topic in mind: Reaching a Settlement in the Shadows of Holocaust (2002), My Father’s War (Brageprisen, 2008), Hitler’s Norwegian Messengers (2011), and The Prisoners that Vanished: NSB and the Slaveworkers on Nordlandsbanen (2015).
Florence Namasinga Selnes is a Postdoctoral research fellow at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies under the project Understanding Youth Participation and Media Literacy in Digital Dialogue Spaces (U-YouPa). She is researching teenagers’ understanding of and experiences with misinformation on social media.
Her research interests are in the areas of media and gender, social media, and media literacy; and media freedom, including the safety and security of journalists, among others. Her work has been published as research articles, book chapters and commentary in the media.