Oslo and Akershus University College of Applied Sciences

Faculty Member, Faculty of Education and International Studies

Since 2008, Professor / Research Director, Program for Research on Education and Work. Since Feb.1, 2012, Vice-Dean (R&D)

About

Between 1985 and 2008 I worked as a researcher, senior researcher, research director, and CEO at the Work Research Institute (WRI) in Oslo, Norway. Over the years I have tried to be both a theorist and a practitioner. With a PhD in Ancient Greek Philosophy (1993), I've been trying to combine philosophical studies and organizational R&D, trying to stretch (both practically and theoretically) accross the still dominant institutionalised practical division of labour concerning knowledge generation and "application".

Professional fields of special interest:
1) Ancient philosophy (particularly Aristotle and his relationship to Plato and to dialogue/dialectics)(first philosophy, methodology, theory of knowledge, ethics, and politics)and the historical / institutional fate of dialogue / dialectics,
2) conceptual issues in empirical social research and professional practice (concept of experience, what does it mean to be "empirical", concept of theory, etc.)
3) Organizational research (organizational learning) and
4) general preconditions for learning (personal, psychological, organizational, social, institutional, economic, etc.)
5) The changing institutional relationships between work, learning,and formal education (mode 2, socially distributed knowledge production).
6) The societal and political implications / ramifications of such changes (the social organisation of knowledge generation and dissemination).

Since the early 1980s I have been working with organizational learning and work-based learning, mainly in action research projects, in combination with critical studies of social research methodology and ancient philosophy.

The methodological and epistemological legitimacy of action research within a changing knowledge management regime (socially distributed knowledge production) concerns me. So do the practice and the ethical-political-methodological-therapeutic-existential-ontological status of dialogue and dialectics as preconditions for critical thinking. Strange combinations for some maybe, but ancient dialogical philosophy, the mystified dialectical "immanent critique", apprenticeship learning, and organizational learning are intimately and internally related and connected. All needed to overcome the institutionalised division of labour between theory and practice.