Members

Kristin Skare Orgeret, head Contact: Kristin.Orgeret@hioa.no Visit Kristin at HIOA´s staff page

Professor Kristin Skare Orgeret heads the MEKK research group together with Professor Roy Krøvel. She has been working as a professor at OsloMet since 2013, and has been working with journalism, lecturing and research in several African and Asian countries, for many years. She did her Master’s in Zimbabwe and PhD field work in South Africa and has lived several years on the African continent as well as in France.

Kristin is the project leader of the ‘Decoding Digital Media in African regions of Conflict’ project (DD-MAC) funded by the Norwegian Research Council, with researchers from Germany, Netherlands, Mali and Ethiopia. She also heads the projects Safety Matters (Intpart) and Expanding Horizons in Journalism and Media Studies (Norpart) with Roy Krøvel.

Other fields of her academic interests include political communication and digital perspectives, and gender and journalism. Orgeret is a member of the NORDICOM scientific board and several international editorial boards. She is frequently used as a commentator in Norwegian media and was awarded the Norwegian Media Researchers’ Dissemination Award in 2016 and OsloMet’s Dissemination Award in 2022.

Contact her at kristo@oslomet.no

Roy Krøvel

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.

Contact him at royk@oslomet.no

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 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.

Rune Ottosen, member Contact: Rune.Ottosen@hioa.no Visit Rune at HIOA´s staff page

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 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.

Contact her at elisabeth.eide@oslomet.no

Anne Hege Simonsen, member Visit Anne Hege at HIOA´s staff page

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.

Elsebeth Frey, member Visit Elsebeth Frey at HIOA´s staff page

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.

Along with former colleague Audgunn Oltedal, she is founder of the pedagogical project Rig on Presse Freedom. Elsebeth heads the research and development project Shared Horizons, a collaboration between Oslo, Tunis and Dhaka. Furthermore, she is part of the research project RESCUE, Researching Social Media and Collaborative Software Use in Emergency Situations.

Anna M. Grøndahl Larsen, member Visit Anna M. Grøndahl Larsen at HIOA´s staff page

Anna Grøndahl Larsen is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Oslo Metropolitan University. Her PhD project explores how Norwegian journalists and news outlets deal with and report topics concerning extremism and the threat of terrorism in the digital age.

She is part of the ongoing research project RESCUE, exploring social media use in emergency and risk communication, and has previously been involved in the research projects Mediation of Migration and The State of Free Speech in Norway. She holds an MA in Media Studies and a BA in Sociology from the University of Oslo.

Dagny Stuedahl, member Visit Dagny Stuedahl at HIOA´s staff page

Dagny Stuedahl is Professor at Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Oslo Metropolitian University. Stuedahl has her background in ethnology and has experience from several multidisciplinary research projects transcending borders between humanities, informatics and educational studies.

Stuedahl is currently involved in the national project EXPAND focusing on design and interaction in science centres. She also leads the Nordic Network Culture Kick, focusing on how approaches in design may work as a bridge in knowledge triangulation between research, innovation and education. Her special interest is in how understanding sociocultural processes and dynamics may be inscribed into methods of participatory and co-design in the heritage field.

Anders Graver Knudsen is Assistant Professor at Faculty of Social Sciences, Department of Journalism and Media Studies. He has done research on transnational orientations in a global media landscape: Youth, media, war and conflict, and has also contributed to publications on coverage of Afghanistan.

Bjørn Westlie, member Visit Bjørn Westlie at HIOA´s staff page

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).

Heidi Røsok-Dahl  is a PhD candidate at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies at Oslo Metropolitan University. She has worked as a journalist for 20 years in NTB, TV 2, Nettavisen, and Sarpsborg Arbeiderblad, in addition to extensive freelance work. Heidi holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from HiOA (2015). She is also on the Norwegian board of IAWRT (International Association for Women in Radio and TV).

Anja Aaheim Naper, member Visit Anja Aaheim Naper at HIOA´s staff page

Anja Aaheim Naper is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Journalism and Media Studies, Oslo Metropolitian University. Her PhD project explores Scandinavian media representations of immigrants during the so-called refugee crisis in 2015/2016, as well as how Scandinavian journalists cover immigration. Previously, she has been involved in research projects related to media and climate communication and politicians’ use of social media. She is a former journalist, who has worked both in the press and with documentary films.

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 also 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.

Follow him on twitter @dialimpa

Oleksandra Hrybenko is researching the safety of women journalists reporting on the war in Ukraine as a PhD candidate at OsloMet. Previously, she worked with human rights and media freedom as a junior Officer for the OSCE in Chisinau, Moldova.

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. 

Svea Vikander is a PhD candidate at the University of the Basque Country in Bilbao and a lecturer in the Journalism and Media Studies Department at OsloMet university. Her MA thesis at the Sámi Allaskuvla (Indigenous Journalism, 2021) documented and analysed Sámi journalists’ experiences of covering sexual violence.

Previously, Svea studied maternal rhetorics at Goddard College (MA Counselling Psychology, 2015) and narrative moral reasoning at the University of Toronto (BA Psychology, 2006). Her current research interests include journalist trauma and recovery, the psychological effects of legal and rhetorical attacks, and minority language journalists’ strategies for coping with stress.

Contact her at sveavika@oslomet.no