At NOVA’s interdisciplinary department for research on childhood, family, and child welfare we direct attention to the welfare services’ and judiciary system’s relevance to the rights and needs of children, as well as to a diversity of family expectations and environments. Our research topics include the child welfare services, children and families from minority and majority backgrounds, children with disabilities, and circumstances of domestic violence.
Head of research group
Read more about our research
We study conditions for families and childhoods and direct attention in particular to positions that can be perceived as vulnerable or exposed in light of what various actors perceive as ordinary, good, or normal. Thus, we are also interested in what such perceptions consist of, and how they are maintained, contested, and changed.
Our research aims to critically examine and evaluate the management, measures and working conditions of the welfare services that target children and families. We view such services as social systems and examine the premises of these systems and their inherent logics, contradictions, and dilemmas.
Our research topics also include domestic violence, Family Counselling Services, migration and diversity, while we continue to develop our considerable methodological competence.
In our research projects, we empirically examine different levels and sectors of society, such as the life situation of individuals and groups, welfare institutions and services, working methods, politics, laws and regulations. We focus on the criteria for inclusion and on the nature and content of cases in the Child Welfare Services and in other services directed towards children, young people, and families.
Our attention is also directed towards the effects of laws, measures, professional practices and policies for different groups in the population, towards the conditions for cooperation between different services, sectors, and professional groups, and on the significance of all this for the lives, affiliations and networks of individuals and families both in Norway and transnationally.
Members
Projects
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The Domestic Violence Research Programme
The programme studies time trends in the prevalence of violence and assault, violence as phenomenon, and how violence is approached by the welfare- and justice systems.
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Doing Co-operation. A Co-study with Landsforeningen for barnevernsbarn and Sarpsborg Municipality to Enhance Support for Vulnerable Children and Y...
How can child welfare services and other support services collaborate more effectively to assist children and young people in vulnerable life situations?
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NAV and Domestic Violence
In this project, we examine how NAV works with issues related to domestic violence and how individuals exposed to violence experience their contact with NAV.
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Disability and Reproductive Health and Rights in Norway
The project will examine the knowledge, attitudes, and practices of health services in their encounters with people with different disabilities in relation to their reproductive rights.
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Support Services and Their Work with Conflict, Control and Violence
This project led by NOVA investigates the Norwegian support services and how they handle conflict/violence in families.
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«Socially excluded» Youth in Disadvantaged Areas?
This PhD project examines how young people experience and negotiate identity and belonging in their everyday lives, in the face of stigma and societal perceptions.
Selected publications
- Smette, I. & Hegna, K. (2025). Understanding Rural Young Women’s Pathways Towards Settledness in Norway: A Longitudinal Perspective. In I Vehkalahti, K. et al. (Eds.). Growing Up Rural. Qualitative Longitudinal Explorations of Young People Living in the Nordic Countries. Palgrave Macmillan
- Johansson, S. et al (Eds.) (2024). Justice and Recovery for Victimised Children. Institutional Tensions in Nordic and European Barnahus Models. Palgrave Macmillan
- Aarset, M.F. & Rosten, M.G. (2024). Stuck in Representation. Muslims Participating in the Norwegian Public Sphere. Journal of Extreme Anthropology
- Pålsson, D. et al. (2024). Licence Loss: Revocations of Residential Care Licences in Four Nordic Countries. Child & Family Social Work
- Prabhat, D. & Seeberg, M.L. (2024). ‘Firm but fair’? Migrant children’s rights through dramaturgy and nation branding in Norway and the UK. Comparative Migration Studies
- Skiple, A. (2024). Whitewashing white Power: a Rhetorical Political Analysis of the parliamentary ambition of the Nordic Resistance Movement in Sweden. Journal of Political Ideologies
- Seeberg, M.L. (2024). Polish nurses in Norway: Migration for “normal” work–life balance. International Migration
More publications are listed at the researcher's employee pages.
