What are the challenges of engaging with diversity and inclusion at a time when these values are under attack? In the US the cost of dealing with topics and activities that are becoming “forbidden” might range from scorn to withdrawal of funding, to losing one’s job and harassment. In other countries, like Norway, inclusion and diversity are not forbidden—in fact many measures are in place to defend them. Yet, far-right positions are increasingly part of mainstream public discourse, both in Norway and in Europe, to the point that even researchers feel their academic freedom might be at risk.
This public event brings together researchers and activists to discuss what the emboldening, spreading and even normalization of Trumpism, anti-immigration policies and racism, a backlash on women’s rights and homo/transphobia, and anti-environmentalism mean for their research, practice, and daily life. Are inclusion and diversity under threat in Norway? How to protect our research freedom, communities and well being? What is at stake in resisting? How to show and do solidarity for one-another at a time of increasing anti-intellectualism, hatred and exclusion?
Program
18.00-18.05 Welcome & introduction
18.05-18.40 Individual panelists briefly introduce their work
18.40-19.15 Panel debate
19.15-20.00 Q&A and conversation with the audience
Panelists
Cristina Archetti is Professor in Political Communication and Journalism at the University of Oslo. She has been researching and publishing on the role of media and communication in political processes for over 20 years. Her research illuminates the “blackspots” of journalism, particularly why and how the voices of minorities get muzzled, and the consequences of this silencing. She is also interested in trauma, especially in how the media might contribute to greater political polarization by amplifying individual and collective wounds.
Banafsheh Ranji is a postdoctoral researcher in sociology at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim. She has been teaching and researching media and communication studies as well as migration studies, social inequality, and critical race studies. Banafsheh is a publicly engaged scholar interested in investigating contemporary social challenges and deconstructing taken-for-granted assumptions through critical sociological approaches.
Iris B. Segers is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Centre for Gender Research (STK), and the Centre for Research on Extremism (C-REX), at the University of Oslo. Her research focuses on far-right politics of knowledge, anti-trans and anti-gender mobilization, threats and harassments against academics, and methodological and ethical challenges in research on the far right. Iris has a background in media studies and sociology of culture. She acquired her PhD in Media and Communication at the University of Oslo in 2020. In her PhD dissertation, she explores the role of local contextual drivers and practices of storytelling in mobilization against asylum seekers in diverse urban spaces.
Jonas Kittelsen has organized over 50 disruptive actions against the fossil fuel industry and those who enable it. Kittelsen recently won against the Norwegian state in the Supreme Court, while he finished his master's thesis from the Centre for Development and the Environment at UiO. He is currently writing his first book about the deep structural changes needed to combat the ecological crisis and strategies for building people power and activism moving forward.
Luca Dalen Espseth is a trans activist currently working in POGI (PKI), the Norwegian patient organization for gender incongruence. He is also the author of the book "Født i rett kropp- Born in the right body" and he has a bachelor's degree in biology and a master’s degree in gender studies. His master's thesis focuses on how the public discourse influences how trans people can live and organize. Luca is also the host of the Norwegian podcast Trans Norge.
