Since August 1, 2015, I have been the Rector (President) of the Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences (Høgskolen i Oslo og Akershus), which as of January 12th, 2018 has been accredited as a university and has taken the name OsloMet – Oslo Metropolitan University. As a biographical curiosity, I’ve been told that this is the first time a non-Norwegian has been at the helm of an institution for higher education in Norway.
In addition to my work as Rector, I lead Norway’s Committee on Gender Balance and Diversity in Research, and I was the head of the Board for Current Research Information System in Norway (CRIStin) through 2016. I also served until recently as a reserve member of the Board for the Language Council of Norway (Språkrådet).
In all of these roles, I work to pursue my conviction that research and education are essential to improving society and that making universities better therefore has the potential to make societies better.
Before becoming Rector, I worked at the University of Tromsø. From 2002–2008, I was the founding director of UiT’s first Norwegian Center of Excellence, the Center for Advanced Study in Theoretical Linguistics (CASTL). From 2009–2013, I served as the elected Vice Rector for Research & Development (prorektor for forskning og utvikling). After my period as Vice Rector, I was elected by the faculty in Tromsø to represent them on the university board, which I did from 2013–2015.
I’m part of the European Science Foundation’s genderSTE COST action (Gender, Science, Technology and Environment); I helped create the BALANSE program at the Research Council of Norway, which is designed to increase the numbers of women at the highest levels of research organizations. I am on the Advisory Board of the European Commission projects EGERA (Effective Gender Equality in Research and Academia) (FP7) and LIBRA (H2020); I was on the Science Leaders Panel of genSET (FP7), in which we advised the European Commission about gender in science; I am a member of the Steering Committee for the Gender Summits.
I also led a national task force on research-based education that issued many suggestions for Norwegian institutions.
I created the crowd-sourced alternative contest to the European Commission’s Science: It’s a girl thing! teaser video (and was co-sponsored in doing so by the European Science Foundation and Nobel Laureate Brian Schmidt); see the results here!
Please note: this page reflects an earlier phase of my work in university leadership and public engagement. Some external links and media references may no longer be active. For more recent activities and writing, please see my LinkedIn profile and Publishing Unlocked.
These pictures can be freely used in non-commercial contexts; please credit the photographer.
Below are the English and Norwegian versions of the announcement that I would become Rector at HiOA.
Photo credit: Martin Skulstad