About
I am a trained teacher with specialiszations in Nordic language, religion, and psychology from the University of Oslo, where I completed my master's degree in text and communication (2022). In my thesis, I investigated how laughter in therapy conversations can influence both the relationship and the therapeutic work between the patient and the therapist, using conversation analysis as a methodological and theoretical framework. I am interested in all linguistic and non-linguistic communication between people, language patterns and rules, and how knowledge of these can be applied in practice. In particular, I am interested in professional communication, and how frameworks, patterns, and roles can be uncovered through close analysis of conversations.
In my PhD project, I investigate how midwives and pregnant women communicate about violence in Norwegian antenatal care. The first meeting between a midwife and a pregnant woman can be challenging, as guidelines from the Norwegian Directorate of Health recommend that questions about experiences of violence and abuse (by current or former partners or others) are asked already in the first consultation. Such questions can provide important information and help ensure appropriate follow-up and referral to relevant support services.
The project is grounded in ethnomethodological conversation analysis (CA). Through detailed analysis of video recordings from antenatal consultations, I examine how violence is introduced, formulated, and managed in interaction. Findings from the project also contribute to the larger ViP project (video-based learning in professional education), where midwifery students are trained using Conversation Analytic Role-play Method (CARM), with the aim of strengthening competence in addressing violence in clinical encounters. The analyses indicate that questions about violence are interactionally complex and require more work than is often assumed in guidelines.
My main supervisor is Hege Hermansen from OsloMet.
Anne Marie Landmark and Mirjam Lukasse from the University of South-Eastern Norway are co-supervisors.
Research groups
Publications and research
Scientific publications
Halvorsen, Marit Nygård
;
Lukasse, Mirjam
; Landmark, Anne Marie
(2025).
More Than a Question: A Conversation Analysis of Midwives' Approaches to Addressing Violence in Antenatal Care.
Sociology of Health and Illness.
Vol. 47.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9566.70081
