About
Nina Heidenstrøm has been employed at SIFO since 2010, where she conducts research on sustainable consumption and household preparedness. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Oslo (2020), with the dissertation “Preparedness in Everyday Life: A Social Practice Perspective”, which explores how preparedness and crisis management are integrated into everyday life.
Over the years, Nina has developed and applied qualitative, ethnographic methods with an emphasis on material infrastructures and products to study everyday life practices. She also employs methods such as document analysis, workshops, interviews, and focus groups. Her research on preparedness has contributed to a better understanding of people’s resources, flexibility, and adaptive capacities in times of crisis, while her work on sustainability policy has highlighted important shortcomings in how consumer roles are understood in policy contexts.
Nina has extensive experience from both national and international research projects. She led the Research Council of Norway (RCN) project “IMAGINE: Contested Futures of Sustainability” (2022–2025) and is currently work package leader in “REDUCE: Rethinking Everyday Plastics”. Her thematic research interests include societal security and preparedness, product longevity, plastic consumption, sustainability imaginaries, consumer policy, and greenwashing.
Field of study
Sustainable developement Consumption Energy use Sustainable consumption Emergency preparedness Sustainability Sustainable National readiness and crisis management Security and preperadness Matsvinn Food consumption Sustainable future
Research groups
Research projects
Completed research projects
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IMAGINE – Contested Futures of Sustainability
When you think about the future, what do you imagine? Flying cars, tubed food, or high-tech clothing might be among the images that come to mind. IMAGINE sets out to study these images of the future as imaginaries. Imaginaries are the many ways in which we humans think about the future and ways in which they can become possible. Our project looks specifically at how we imagine sustainable futures.
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LASTING: Sustainable prosperity through product durability
How can the lifespans of consumer goods be increased?
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Plateforms: Enabling sustainable food practices through socio-technical innovation
The Research Project PLATEFORMS aims to produce in-depth knowledge on how food practices in the home are affected by innovations in food provisioning platforms.
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REDUCE – Rethinking Everyday Plastics
The project will look at plastic in a systems perspective and investigate how the consumption of plastic products in everyday life can be reduced.
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Wasted Textiles
The primary objective of this project is to reduce the use of synthetic textiles and the amount that goes to waste.
Publications and research
Scientific publications
Heidenstrøm, Nina
;
Hebrok, Marie
(2026).
A taste of tomorrow. How food informs imaginaries of the future.
Amilien, Virginie; Saïdi, Monia; Duboys-De-Labarre, Matthieu (Ed.).
Sustainable Consumption and Everyday Food Practices in Europe.
Routledge.
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/5368946
Heidenstrøm, Nina
; Baron, Nina; Andersen, Nina Blom
(2025).
Redefining Citizen Preparedness Through Social Practice Theory – Implications for Preparedness Policy.
Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management.
Vol. 33.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-5973.70088
Hegnes, Atle Wehn
;
Heidenstrøm, Nina
;
Laitala, Kirsi
(2025).
Hygiene practices in everyday Life: Exploring the adoption and environmental implications of disposable gloves.
Laursen, Linda Nhu; Hansen, Andreas Kornmaaler (Ed.).
Proceedings of the 6th Product Lifetimes and the Environment Conference (PLATE2025). p. 626-631.
Aalborg University.
https://doi.org/10.54337/plate2025-10318
Heidenstrøm, Nina
(2025).
Green marketing in the fashion industry: a critical analysis of sustainability narratives.
Consumption Markets & Culture.
https://doi.org/10.1080/10253866.2024.2440557
Austgulen, Marthe Hårvik
;
Bøyum, Live
; Nessel, Sebastian;
Heidenstrøm, Nina
(2024).
Exploring the nexus of consumer policy and environmental sustainability: A scoping review protocol.
OSF Preprints.
https://doi.org/10.31235/osf.io/c2vaz
Hebrok, Marie
;
Heidenstrøm, Nina
(2024).
Contested imaginaries of Preferable Food Futures: A Comparative Analysis of the Digital Food Provisioning Platforms ODA and REKO-ringen.
Jacobsen, Eivind; Strandbakken, Pål; Dulsrud, Arne; Skuland, Silje Elisabeth (Ed.).
Consumers and Consumption in Comparison (Volume 37). p. 215-229.
Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
https://doi.org/10.1108/S0195-631020240000037010
Heidenstrøm, Nina
(2021).
The utility of social practice theory in risk research.
Journal of Risk Research.
https://doi.org/10.1080/13669877.2021.1936608
Heidenstrøm, Nina
;
Hebrok, Marie
(2021).
Towards realizing the sustainability potential within digital food provisioning platforms: The case of meal box schemes and online grocery shopping in Norway.
Sustainable Production and Consumption.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.spc.2021.06.030
Heidenstrøm, Nina
;
Hebrok, Marie
(2021).
Fridge studies – Rummage through the fridge to understand food waste.
Appetite.
Vol. 165.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.appet.2021.105321
Heidenstrøm, Nina
; Hansen, Anders Rhiger
(2020).
Embodied competences in preparedness for blackouts: Mixed methods insights from rural and urban Norwegian households.
Energy Research & Social Science.
Vol. 66:101498.
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101498
