About the project
Over the last five decades, a more digitalised State has emerged in Norway. This PhD project focuses on controversies regarding computerisation of its public administration from the 1970s to the 1990s. It studies the complex of actors, technologies, values and decisions that formed the early days of what was called data policy. This notion of a new policy area (forvaltningsområde) is investigated empirically through official documents such as Official Norwegian Reports (NOU), White Papers, Government strategies and public handbooks. By applying a practice-oriented method to document analysis, the project will address the question of how computer technologies became objects to govern and for the public administration to govern with. Through three articles, this issue is investigated. The first article deals with how computer technologies inhabit spaces of the future, and public documents as futuring devices. The second article investigates casework as a statecraft, and the reconfigurations of practices and expertise through computerisation. The third article attends to the new infrastructures of a computerised public administration and the ordering of computing power (datakraft) and workforce (arbeidskraft). The overall goal of the project is to better understand the historical reconfigurations of technological development, bureaucratic practices and politics as they became entangled in new forms of statecraft.
Thesis supervisor
- Professor Kristin Asdal (TIK Centre for Technology, Innovation and Culture, University of Oslo)
Commentators
- Professor Margunn Aanestad (Department of Informatics, University of Oslo)
- Associate Professor Hilde Reinertsen (Department of Linguistics and Scandinavian Studies, University of Oslo)
About the candidate
Torjus holds a BSc in geography from NTNU and a MSc in Environment and Conflict Analysis (Human Security) from Aarhus University. Before joining TIK, he worked with science communication for GRID-Arendal, covering topics related to climate and environment in polar and high mountain regions.
How to participate
The seminar is open for everyone to join. Welcome!
The manuscript is available upon request. Please send the request to Torjus t.s.eckhoff@tik.uio.no.