While racism in Norway is a fact in the everyday life of the minorities who experience it, it is extremely difficult to talk about it publicly without being met by defensiveness, dismissal, even denial. Confronting racism is uncomfortable.
This event invites you to step beyond the comfort zone and join the panelists in a thought-provoking and much needed conversation that will address the following questions:
-What enables the continued existence of racism in Norway?
-What are the effects of racism remaining “invisible in plain sight”?
-How to face what we are too uncomfortable to name and move towards genuine equality for all?
Racism is elusive to those who are not directly affected by it. The speakers will illuminate its hidden systemic mechanisms and far-reaching repercussions through a range of perspectives: how the notion of “race,” even if discredited, is still shaping contemporary society; the key role of the media in producing and re-producing the standards of “normality,” including its discriminatory bias; the effects that racism has on the life, health and well-being of those affected by it; what measures can be adopted in education to overcome the internalized racism we are not even aware of.
This event grows out of the findings of the project “Samlende eller splittende? Betydningen av medieframstillinger av innvandrere for integrering” funded by Medietilsynet. The study was an investigation into the representations of immigrants by Norwegian media during the Covid-19 pandemic and the effects that this coverage had on the life of the immigrants themselves.
The program starts with the speakers’ presentations, continues with a panel discussion, and ends with Q&A.
Speakers
Cristina Archetti (UiO) and Banafsheh Ranji (NTNU)
Racism in the media: Deconstructing “normality”
Michelle A. Tisdel (National Library of Norway)
Heritage, archives, and knowledge production: A social justice approach?
Jon Røyne Kyllingstad (UiO)
The absence of race in Norway?
Kristin Gregers Eriksen (USN)
Discomforting presence in the classroom: The sanctioned ignorance of coloniality and racism
Patji Alnæs-Katjavi (Oslo University Hospital)
What is unconscious bias?
Bios
Cristina Archetti is Professor in Political Communication and Journalism at the University of Oslo. She has been studying the role of media and communication in political processes for over 20 years. Among other topics, she has written books on international journalism, media and radicalization, taboo in the 21st century. She is particularly interested in the “blackspots” of journalism, especially in why and how the voices of minorities get muzzled and silenced.
Banafsheh Ranji is a postdoctoral researcher in sociology at NTNU. Her field of research includes media sociology, journalism, as well as everyday life experiences of minority communities such as immigrants and refugees. She is currently studying how Norwegian institutions, in particular the introduction programme, structure migrants’ everyday life practices.
Michelle A. Tisdel holds a doctorate in Social Anthropology from Harvard University (2006). She has conducted long-term fieldwork in Cuba and written a doctoral dissertation on museums and Afro-Cuban heritage production. Tisdel's research interests include cultural policy, heritage production, and discourses of belonging in Norway and Cuba. She has worked as a research librarian at the National Library of Norway since 2008.
Jon Røyne Kyllingstad is a historian and associate professor at the University of Oslo, Museum for University and Science History. He is specialized in the history of science and the history of academic institutions in the period ca 1870 – 2000. He was previously head conservator at the Norwegian Museum of Technology where he led the research and exhibition project "FOLK – From racial types to DNA sequences". His last book Rase: en vitenskapshistorie (Race: a history of a science) sums up two decades of work on changing ideas about race, ethnicity and the nation, within physical anthropology, genetics, and humanities disciplines such as archaeology and history in Norway.
Kristin Gregers Eriksen is an Associate Professor in Educational studies at the University of South-Eastern Norway. Her research and teaching revolve around racism and antiracist education, indigenous and Sámi knowledges in education, and decolonial approaches to research and pedagogy. She is author of several textbooks and learning materials about racism for all levels of education. Kristin is Head of the research group in Social Studies education (SAMD) at the University of South-Eastern Norway, and Convenor of the Nordic Educational Research Associations` network on Critical Race, Racism and Whiteness in Education.
Patji Alnæs-Katjavivi is a doctor, employed at the maternity ward, Ullevål, Oslo University Hospital. Born, raised and educated in London, Patji is 50years old, married with two children. Patji stands 177cm tall.
