Research

My main areas of research are the World Heritage Convention, heritage bureaucracies, expertise and politics.

World Heritage Convention

I have researched various facets of the World Heritage Convention’s history and have recently completed Implementing the World Heritage Convention: Dimensions of Compliance (co-authored with Evan Hamman), due out with Edward Elgar in 2023. Earlier research has focused on Norway’s early implementation of the World Heritage Convention (co-authored with Jessica Phelps), the politics of the World Heritage Committee (co-authored with Morgaine Wood), insiders’ research on the World Heritage Convention (co-authored with Marit Johansson) and the List of World Heritage In Danger (co-authored with Evan Hamman and Jessica Phelps). My PhD focused on the implementation of the World Heritage Convention in Australia and New Zealand.

Heritage politics 

Together Elisabeth Niklasson I have researched how heritage in various ways are put to work politically.  We have organised several sessions at the European Association of Archaeologists annual meetings and at the Nordic Tag on the European far-right’s heritage policies, and heritage governance and the concept of ‘arm’s length’. Together we have published articles on the far-right’s heritage policies in Scandinavia, the conditions needed for the far-right to rise, the rhetoric of the Scandinavian far-right, and how to study up and study international heritage regimes. I have also written (in Norwegian) about the impact of the regional reform on the heritage sector in Norway.

Heritage theory

Together with Joar Skrede, I have revisited the heritage classic Laurajane Smith’s Uses of heritage in article in Journal of social archaeology. One of the topics we identified as interesting to investigate further was the role of experts within the fields of heritage studies. This led us to conduct an interdisciplinary exploration of experts in liberal democracies, published in the International Journal of Heritage Studies.

For a full overview of my publications and full access to most of the publications, see Academia.edu.