About
Aina Landsverk Hagen is a Research Professor with a PhD in social anthropology from the University of Oslo, on collaborative creativity among architects in Oslo and New York. Her MA was based on ethnographic fieldwork in Iran, researching feminists, women’s journals, freedom of speech and youth agency in Teheran’s urban spaces. She was among the co-founders of the Norwegian feminist journal Fett while working in several media outlets as a desk journalist and copy editor, before moving on to become a social scientist – currently at the Work Research Institute, Oslo Metropolitan University. Hagen has done action research on digital and social transformation in private and public organizations, developed citizen social science and participatory peer-to-peer methodology with youth and students in local communities and higher education. She has extensive experience with and interest in experimentation with social science methods, ethnography, science dissemination and co-creation. The past years she has followed Iranian feminist activists in exile in Europe and USA. She is currently leading a new research venture, on young people’s practices of hope in super-diverse cities in the Nordic countries.
Field of study
Innovation Working life research Childhood and youth Feminism Creativity Knowledge organizations Digitalization Ytringsfrihet Media innovation Architect work Urban development Folkeforskning Social sustainability Participation
Research groups
Research projects
Ongoing research projects
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A Boost for Youth Clubs – A Research Project for Better Youth Services
How can youth clubs be strengthened to provide better services for young people? From 2025, we will follow the five-year initiative "A Boost for Youth Clubs" to develop knowledge about quality, framework conditions, and the club’s role in the local community.
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Futures and Policy Lab
OsloMet's Futures and Policy Lab, is a hub for futures-oriented critical thinking, development of futures methods and techniques, and research-driven experimentation and organizational development rooted in futures studies.
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YouHope: Practicing hope
In YouHope we will challenge myths and stereotypes of integration issues concerning youth citizens in super-diverse urban communities.
Completed research projects
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Empowering youth and co-creating social innovations and policymaking through youth-focused citizen social science (YouCount)
YouCount will, through co-creative youth citizen social science (Y-CSS), with youth aged 15 to 29 years as citizen scientists, produce new knowledge of positive drivers for social inclusion of youth at risk of exclusion, as well as create innovation and new policies.
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Exploring Relationships of Trust and Distrust Between Youth Populations and Public Services in Vulnerable Areas (Ungtillit)
The project will contribute to gathering and developing knowledge about what young people's trust and distrust of public helpers is about, an how we can strengthen the relationships.
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Involving young people in research and development of services, with the school health service as an example (UngPuls)
UngPuls will test knowledge-based methods for youth participation in research and service design.
Publications and research
Scientific publications
Marie, Stender,; Claus, Bech-Danielsen,;
Hagen, Aina Landsverk
; Madlen, Kobi,; Ying, Zhou,
(2026).
The Routledge Handbook of Architecture and Anthropology: Contemporary Approaches to a Cross-Disciplinary Field.
ISBN: 9781032800158.
434 p.
Routledge.
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/5339892
Hagen, Aina Landsverk
(2025).
The Frustrated Need for Meaning: Situational Aesthetic Boredom and Collaborative Creativity in Everyday Architectural Competition Work.
Stender, Marie; Bech-danielsen, Claus; Hagen, Aina Landsverk; Kobi, Madlen; Zhou, Ying (Ed.).
The Routledge Handbook of Architecture and Anthropology: Contemporary Approaches to a Cross-Disciplinary Field. p. 140-149.
Taylor & Francis.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003495017
Rudningen, Gudrun;
Hagen, Aina Landsverk
;
Tolstad, Ingrid M.
;
Hansen, Per Bonde
(2025).
Situasjonell kreativitet: Hva kan papirdesken som forsvant, lære oss om kreativt arbeid?.
Mediehistorisk tidsskrift.
Vol. 22.
https://doi.org/https://medietidsskrift.no/wp-cont
Rudningen, Gudrun;
Hagen, Aina Landsverk
;
Hansen, Per Bonde
;
Tolstad, Ingrid M.
(2025).
Situasjonell kreativitet: Hva kan papirdesken som forsvant, lære oss om kreativt arbeid?.
Mediehistorisk tidsskrift.
Vol. 44.
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/5359611
Kitterød, Hilde Rønnaug
;
Hagen, Aina Landsverk
;
Lorenzen, Sara Berge
(2025).
Moments of Joy and Moments of Discomfort: Enhancing Young People’s Epistemic Justice and Researchers’ Reflexivity Through Youth Citizen Social Science.
Nordisk tidsskrift for ungdomsforskning (NTU).
Vol. 6.
https://doi.org/10.18261/ntu.6.2.4
Millstein, Marianne
;
Hagen, Aina Landsverk
(2025).
Becoming Rebels. From Everyday Acts of Protest to Radical Imaginaries and Societal Change.
Journal of Extreme Anthropology.
Vol. 8.
https://doi.org/10.5617/jea.12214
Stender, Marie; Bech-danielsen, Claus;
Hagen, Aina Landsverk
; Kobi, Madlen; Zhou, Ying
(2025).
The Routledge Handbook of Architecture and Anthropology: Contemporary Approaches to a Cross-Disciplinary Field.
ISBN: 9781032800158.
Taylor & Francis.
https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003495017
Millstein, Marianne
;
Hagen, Aina Landsverk
(2024).
Becoming Rebels: From Everyday Acts of Protest to Radical Imaginaries and Societal Change
| Journal of Extreme Anthropology.
Journal of Extreme Anthropology.
Vol. 8.
https://doi.org/10.5617/jea.12214
Hagen, Aina Landsverk
(2024).
Scaling Feminist Activism: On Transnational and Transgenerational Activism in Iran and Among the Global Diasporas Before and After Jina Mahsa Amini
| Journal of Extreme Anthropology.
Journal of Extreme Anthropology.
Vol. 8.
https://doi.org/10.5617/jea.12330
Hagen, Aina Landsverk
;
Lorenzen, Sara Berge
(2024).
Chasing balloons as scientific practice: On transformative cocreation and epistemic ethics of care in the emerging field of youth citizen social science.
International Journal of Action Research.
Vol. 20.
https://doi.org/10.3224/ijar.v20i1.06
