Newsletter No 36  November 2003 News From National Committees

 Norway

ANNOUNCEMENT

New Professor of Women’s History

 Inger Elisabeth Haavet (1957)

Dr. Philos. Professor of Gender History at the History Department, University of Bergen since 1.7.2003.

Publications in demography/family history, welfare studies, biography and history of music culture. Doctoral thesis: Nina Grieg - kunstner og kunstnerhustru (Nina Grieg - artist and artist wife). Participant in  networks in three nordic networkgroups on family and welfare studies. Member of the editorial board of  Tidsskrift for velferdsforskning (Journal of welfare research)

 RESEARCH INTERESTS

Welfare and family studies:

Several projects in welfare history and social security systems in Norway. Special interests are paid to the systems of childcare inside and outside family and public policy conserned with supporting families in childcare and maintainment of  family needs. The public/private dichotomy is questioned in most of these studies.  MA -thesis about illegitimate childbirth (demography/social history) and  later research on unmarried mothers as a target group for social welfare. Books about the development of norwegian  social security system and about nutrition politics. Will be lecturing in Welfare, Gender and Politics in spring 2004.

Published in English:

“Milk, Mothers and Marriage -Family Policy Formation in Norway and neighbouring Countries”. To be published in Copenhagen 2004 in Petersen, Klaus & Niels Finn Christensen (ed):  The Nordic Model - a historical Appraisal.

Biography and cultural life:

Theoretical work in progress on biographical writing in history; lectures and opponent in two dissertations.

The book and thesis on Nina Grieg  deals with the spouse functions in life and art of Nina and Edvard  Grieg, and questions how public and private relations are mixed and separated in their musical careers and  marriage life. An article (1999) questions the wife-role in general, referring to the relational biography of Nina and Edward Grieg.

A Post.doc.-project (in progress) deals with music careers in Bergen in a gender perspective (Musikk som næringsvei i Bergen 1850-ca. 1920). Music was a more aceeptable way of living and financing an independent life for women than many other carreers in 19^th. century. Many women of the middle class got a proper education in music as a preparation for  beeing a supportive wife. This opened up possibilities for alternative carreers, and challenged the borders between spheres of “male” production and “female” reproduction. The  great numbers of female musicians questioned both music as career and masculinity /femininity in the cultural field.

Published in English (and German):

“Nina Grieg - wife and artist” in Your Grieg - catalogue for the national jubilee of Edvard Grieg, Bergen 1993

Compiled by Inger Marie Okkenhaug