Academic interests and areas of expertise
Marianne Therese is a qualitative researcher within various projects related to people and society. She specializes in digital interventions (also known as e-health programmes, internet interventions, web-based programmes) and has both developed these and researched how they work. Understanding the working mechanisms of digital interventions is important to be able to make good ones. Marianne Therese has particularly focused on the potential importance of a "working alliance" between the person and the program. Now she is also researching how a digital intervention can affect a professional relationship between two people, and whether the digital helper and the human helper can reinforce each other. She is concerned that digital interventions must be understood, improved and utilized in the larger social context in which they are part of, and that if they are utilized in the right way they can form a larger and more important part of the welfare society.
Another field she has researched is how people get through difficult life phases and use their own resources to improve their quality of life - a field that is also known as "salutogenesis", or knowledge of what leads to health. She is concerned with removing the artificial divisions between body and mind and increasing knowledge of how thoughts, emotions and body affect each other. She also wants to increase understanding of how negative power and difficult circumstances challenge people's well-being and lead to both psychological, emotional and physical problems.
Background: summary of qualifications and relevant work experience
Marianne Therese has a master's degree in cultural and community psychology (Faculty of Social Sciences) and a PhD in digital interventions (Faculty of Medicine), both from the University of Oslo. She has also worked in the child protection services, both as a social worker and as an administrative consultant.
Research awards
Best poster award at the 2023 conference by the Norwegian Pain Association (Norsk Smerteforening).
Appointments
The planet and the nature of which we are a part is also something Marianne Therese is concerned with, and to convey knowledge about the planetary boundries. Because of this commitment, she is also deputy leader of Concerned Scientists Norway.
Collaboration
- Qualitative and multi-methods lab, Department of Psychology, University of Oslo.
- Oslo Qualitative Forum.
- Open Digital Health.
- The research group Wellbeing and Social Sustainability (NTNU).