Tina Mathisen

Tina Mathisen is a researcher at the Department for Childhood, Family and Child Welfare research at NOVA. Her expertise is within migration research with a particular focus on children and young people. Mathisen has extensive experience with fieldwork and interviews with young people and adults, especially in school contexts and local communities. She also researches cooperation between welfare services and children and young people's participation.

Mathisen has a doctorate from the Department of Human Geography at Uppsala University (2020), and a master's degree in sociology from the University of Oslo. The doctoral work explored the place attachment processes and multiple belongigs of young people with a refugee background living in rural areas in Norway. Using participant-centered methods such as in-depth interviews, participant observation, activity diaries and photography, the thesis examined how young former refugees actively created and negotiated belonging in different contexts. The work highlights how place, space and time play a role in how belonging is created, as well as how boundaries of national belonging are (re)produced in everyday life.

Other topics she has studied include the reception and inclusion of migrants in rural areas and in working life, the cultural and creative sector in rural areas, entrepreneurship education, and the cooperation between welfare services and follow-up of children and young people in vulnerable life situations.