Academic Interests
Main research fields are theory of science and methodology, law and ruling and understandings of gender (in general and issues related to work, sexuality and body in particular). Her resent major research projects include “The Sociality of Tiredness - The Handling of Tiredness in a Gender, Generation and Class Perspective” and the EU-project “ Changing Knowledge and Disciplinary Boundaries Through Integrative Research Methods in the Social Sciences and Humanities”.
The relation between theoretical and methodological approaches, how theory can be translated into empirical research, and vice versa, is a key issue in all her writing. In Widerberg’s research projects on; Parental Leave Legislation, Sexual Harassment, The Gender of Knowledge, Doing Body/Texts, The Sociality of Tiredness, she has raised and illustrated the issue and argued for the development of explorative qualitative methods within the social science. In her textbooks on qualitative methods Qualitative Research in Praxis, and on ”writing the social” in Writing Social Science, these arguments have been further substantiated. In developing and exploring qualitative research the approaches of Institutional Ethnography and Memory Work - also in combination - have been central.
Background
- B.A at the University of Lund (Sweden) in 1971
- Ph.D. in Sociology of Law, at the University of Lund in 1978
- Research Associate at Dep. of Sociology of Law, at Lunds University 1980-83
- Research Assosiate at Dep. of Sociology of Law at University of Oslo (UiO) 1983-88
- Head of Research at the Center for Women’s Research, UiO 1988-90
- Professor of Sociology of Law, Dep. of Sociology of Law, UiO 1991
- Professor of Sociology, Dep. for Sociology and Human Geography (ISS), UiO since 1992
- Affiliate Professor, Center for Women´s Research, University of Trondheim, 1994-97
- Guest Professor, Dep. of Sociology, University of Copenhagen, Denmark 1997
- Head of the Department, Dep. for Sociology and Human Geography (ISS) , UiO, 2008-11