Halvorsen is participating in the sub-project Anti-discrimination in Europe and Digitial Challenges - ICT Policy and Universal Design  in Crossnational Perspective. His research interests include comparative welfare policy, analysis of social movement mobilisation and coping strategies among disabled people, ethnic minorities and social security claimants in Western Europe . To an increasing degree he has focused on the relationship between the European Union, the member states and the EEA countries in social policy areas. Recently he has contributed to the development of improved subject or agency perspectives in welfare-policy research. This has included a focus on the coping, adjustment and resistance strategies used by vulnerable and disadvantaged social groups in their interaction with public authorities, the mass media and society at large. Rune Halvorsen is employed as post doc fellow  at  NTNU Social Research ltd and as adjunct lecturer (20%) in the Department of Social Work and Health Science.  

Marianne Hedlund works as a post doctoral scholar at the Department of Social Work and Health Science at NTNU. She also teaches at the University College of Nord-Trøndelag. She has a doctoral degree in sociology from Sweden where she was employed at the Centre for Handicap Research. She is participating in the sub-project examining the concept of disability as a political and bureaucratic construct. She has previously been involved with applied research on user influence, transport schemes for people with impairment, and welfare programmes for persons with muscular diseases. She has focused on power perspectives, particularly related to social categorisations of disability, and exclusion and inclusion mechanisms in society. In recent years she has participated in studies of definitions and administrative delimitations of disability in EU member states. Her methodological expertise is in the field of qualitative research methods, particularly document analysis and discourse analysis.
Click here for a more detailed presentation of the Post.Doc project.

[Selected publications]

Bjørn Hvinden is professor of sociology at the Department of Sociology and Political Science, NTNU. Since 1974 he has carried out research on disability and employment. This has included projects examining disability-related measures in the workplace, ascertaining the extent to which participants in local government return-to-work measures find suitable work afterwards, and studying Norwegian policies to promote labour-market participation from a comparative perspective. More recently he has written about the main features of the overall Norwegian policy efforts for people with impairments, and how the profile of these efforts is changing under the influence of international and European development in this area. He has also been involved in the management of a European comparative project examining how disability is defined in Acts, administrative regulations and the everyday practices of public agencies and professions. 

He heads and is participating in two sub-projects: "Non-discrimination in Norway and Europe – Transnational Transformations of Disability Policy", and: "The Concept of Disability as a Political and Bureaucratic Construction.

Anna M. Kittelsaa is a research fellow at the Department of Social Work and Health Science. Her research focuses on young adults with intellectual disabilities; how they experience their daily lives, what it is like for them to be surrounded by helpers and the extent to which they experience self-determination. 

Before this she undertook a small-scale study of adults with Asperger syndrome, and has also worked on a project on the theoretical and methodological underpinnings of living condition surveys that include disabled people.

Hege Lundeby is a sociologist and research fellow in health science at the Department of Social Work and Health Science, NTNU. She has been working on various disability projects since 1997 that have focused on living conditions for people with intellectual disabilities and growing up with disabilities. Being a family member/parent of a child with a disability has been of special interest, with topics such as everyday life, relations to the health and social services, the home/work relationship, the gendered division of labour, normality and difference in the family. 

She has participated in one of the longitudinal studies under the project "Growing Up with a Disability" from its inception. Her PhD is connected to the second phase of this project, with children in the first years of primary school, and with family/parental roles in focus.

Eva Magnus has a degree in occupational therapy and is now working as a research fellow. For many years she has worked as an assistant professor in occupational therapy education. 

Her research interests now are disability, gender and everyday life, with a focus on activity experiences and what causes barriers to participation in higher education. How to understand the influence and meaning of daily activities on identity for women facing disability has also been one of her main interests. Over the past few years she has taken part in a Scandinavian occupational science network researching students’ activity patterns.

Torbjørn Svendsen is professor at the Signal Processing Group of the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications, the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He received his siv.ing. degree (MSc) from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in 1979 and his dr.ing. degree from NTH in 1985. He has been actively involved with research in various aspects of speech and spoken language processing for more than 20 years, spanning speech coding, recognition and synthesis as well as spoken dialogue systems and, currently, multi-modal user interfaces. He has supervised 10 completed PhD projects within this area and is currently supervising 7 on-going PhD projects. Professor Svendsen has been involved in the ESPRIT SAM project (ESPRIT 2589), and a number of COST actions (208, 232, 249, 278) and is currently vice chair of COST action 278, “Spoken Language Interaction in Telecommunication”. He has had extended research stays at AT&T Bell Laboratories, AT&T Labs, Griffith University (Australia) and Queensland University of Technology (Australia). He has been a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Speech Technical Committee and has been extensively used for paper reviews for international scientific journals and conferences as well as for international project reviewing. He has managed several major national projects within the area of speech technology and is currently chair of the VERDIKT programme board at the Norwegian Research Council.

Jan Tøssebro is professor at the Department of Social Work and Health Science, NTNU and for the last 15 years has been involved in disability research with a social science profile. One main area of interest has been research on the dismantling of institutions for people with intellectual disabilities, focusing particularly on living conditions. Has also been involved in research on special needs education; the inclusion of intellectually disabled children in regular schools and classes. Recently his research interests have been expanded from intellectual disabilities to disablement in general, and issues such as growing up with a disability, families and living conditions have been addressed. He has been a member of two government committees, one discussing new strategies for disability policy (1999-2001, report NOU 2001: 22 From User to Citizen) and the other examining disability rights legislation (2002-2005). He was the editor of the Scandinavian Journal of Disability Research from 2002 to 2004, and is currently the chair of the Norwegian State Council on Disability. 

Jan Tøssebro is the programme manager for and is working actively on two of the five projects: "Growing Up with a Disability" and "Disabled Peoples’ Living Conditions". He is also supervising the project on disability and higher education.

Christian Wendelborg is a research fellow at NTNU Social Research ltd, with an office at the Department of Social Work and Health Science at NTNU. He holds a cand. polit.-degree from the Department of Education at NTNU. He also works at North Trøndelag Research Institute where his fields of research include childhood environment, peer relations, psychosocial functioning and public administration.

His PhD-project is part of in the longitudinal sub-project “Growing Up with a Disability”, which follows children with disabilities as they grow up. Wendelborg is connected to the third phase of the sub-project. First phase was completed while the children were of pre-school age and the second phase when the children were in the first years of primary school. The data acquisition of the third phase will be implemented when the children are in their last years of primary school. This phase will, among others, concern peer relations, inclusion and exclusion in the peer group and interaction between environments surrounding the children.

Borgunn Ytterhus works as an associate professor at the Department of Social Work & Health Science. Her research focuses on social inclusion and exclusion, children and disability. During the last ten years she has been involved in research on everyday life segregation in face-to-face interaction between children with and without impairments. One overriding feature of the research is the interest in ontogenesis; how everyday life segregation arises and changes during one's lifespan. 

She has also been involved in research on special needs education and intellectually disabled children, and research on children with mentally ill parents. She is now expanding her research to include issues in the intersection between social and philosophical understandings of disability, segregation and technology. She is directing and participating in the qualitative part of the "Growing Up with a Disability" project, where she is studying face-to-face interaction between children and young people with and without impairments at school. She is a member of the Norwegian Network on Disability Research Board (2004 – 2006).