Trial lecture
The trial lecture lasts from 10:00-10:45. Title: Present and discuss how central power relations like age and gender could be theoretically and analytically activated in relation to loneliness as an empirical field.
Public defence
The candidate will defend their thesis at 12:00.
The committee
- Associate Professor Axel Ågren, Linkøping University
- Professor Malin Rönnblom, Karlstad University
- Associate Professor Hilde Anette Aamodt, Oslo Metropolitan University
Leader of the public defence
Dean Oddgeir Osland, Faculty of Social Sciences, Oslo Metropolitan University
Supervisors
- Main supervisor: Professor Marit Haldar, Oslo Metropolitan University.
- Co-supervisor: Associate Professor Erik Børve Rasmussen, Oslo Metropolitan University
- Co-supervisor Professor Julia Köhler-Olsen, Oslo Metropolitan University
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Abstract
The dissertation presents a discourse analysis of policy documents and political speech on loneliness from Norway and the United Kingdom. The research merges post-structuralist analytical lenses including a novel combination of LeGreco and Tracy’s discourse tracing with Carol Bacchi’s What is the Problem Represented to Be (WPR) approach.
The candidate demonstrates how technology in loneliness policy is seen as a causal and remedial force. The analysis reveals how loneliness is additionally enacted as a public health issue in both countries. The overall findings reveal how loneliness becomes a vehicle for airing concerns about the nature of modernity and the sustainability of the welfare state.
The author explores how neoliberal themes underlying the discourses can omit certain possibilities in terms of approaching the issue. Although many of the discourses within loneliness policy are similar across contexts, they nevertheless reflect very different imaginaries of the welfare state.
