This year's recipients of NAF's field work grant

june 8
3 Min Reading

Selma Øilo Tenold, Kaja Helene Vogt and Håvard Widerøe

We congratulate Selma Øilo Tenold, Kaja Helene Vogt and Håvard Widerøe the awarding of NAF's field work grant 2024

In 2024, NAF's fieldwork grant will be divided between three master's students, all of whom will receive a scholarship of NOK 10,000.

Selma Øilo Tenold is awarded a fieldwork grant for the master’s project ‘ Maculinity among Pro-Feminist Men in Montevideo, Uruguay ‘, which focuses on men fighting for gender equality in a ‘machismo’-dominated cultural context in Latin America. Tenold will travel to Montevideo in Uruguay and carry out field work where she will follow several activist groups that work with masculinity and equality.
Through the study, she wants to shed light on how the established ‘machismo culture’ influences and is influenced by women’s and men’s involvement in equality issues, and what which motivates men to mobilize themselves against an established patriarchal culture.

Kaja Helene Vogt is awarded a fieldwork scholarship for the master’s project ‘ The Grounds of the Inherent Gender Bias of Articifial Intelligence ‘, which will examine how individuals, norms and discourses contribute to shaping AI systems, including chatbots
technologies. Vogt is particularly interested in the gender dimension of this technological development and how this both reflects social norms and affects them on society. To shed light on these issues, she travels to Silicon Valley to carry out a fieldwork. Vogt will live in a ‘hacker house’ in San Francisco together with tech developers and computer programmers, in order to gain insight into which attitudes and ideas about gender that apply in environments that are central to the development of AI technologies.

Håvard Widerøe is awarded a field work grant for his master’s project on politics activism related to homelessness and the housing crisis in Dublin, Ireland . In the neoliberal Ireland has the deregulation of the housing market and the downsizing of the social housing policy contributed to a housing crisis. As a result of increased rental expenses and living costs force many young adults to live with their parents. The housing crisis also manifests itself in a large number of homeless individuals and families. It

the economic situation that contributes to the marginalization of many young adults has also led to a flourishing of groups and organizations that operate politically activism for a more socially inclusive and fair society. Widerøe comes into its own fieldwork to follow one such organisation, The Community Action Tenants Union (CATU) and will investigate how the organization through mobilizing to collective action can help create good neighborhoods and better living situations.

We congratulate Selma, Kaja and Håvard so much and wish them the best of luck the fieldwork!

The scholarship committee this year consisted of Jon Harald Sande Lie (NUPI) and Erik Henningsen

(Oslomet). Below you can read their justification for the award:

In the selection of scholarship recipients, the committee has emphasized that the master’s projects must meet the requirements laid down in the guidelines for the field work grant. Among otherwise, this requirement applies that the fieldwork must be carried out in communities and social settings arenas where the student can immerse himself in social life and use participation observation as one of its most important research methods.

As it was decided that the scholarship this year would be shared between three master’s students, the committee has also emphasized achieving a spread of the master’s projects that are awarded scholarship with respect to their regional focus and a spread between the educational institutions the students are affiliated with.

All three master’s projects that are awarded grants are distinguished by their analytically ambitious, while at the same time demonstrating social and political commitment. The committee has emphasized the willingness to shed light on “big” and current topics (equality struggle, neoliberalism, AI technology) through participatory observation which is expressed in the three master’s projects.

The committee has also emphasized that the three projects appear to be methodical feasible, in that the students have plans to link up with environments / organizations / movements as arenas for the fieldwork. The students also show that they have good insight into the cultural contexts they want to enter and familiarity with the places they will seek out through the fieldwork. This means that the committee believes that they are good reasons to expect that the three master’s projects will be able to produce new and interesting knowledge.