Academic Life

Happy new year! As we move into 2026, I am currently undergoing a gradual shift in my academic life. I don’t have any new annual projects planned this year (like 365 Sound Actions or #StillStanding). This year is more about wrapping up old things and moving on with exciting new projects. I am more or less done with writing Still Standing, which summarizes 15 years of micromotion research. My AMBIENT project is also about to end, with sveral of my doctoral and postdoctoral fellows wrapping up their projects in the coming months. The plan is to write a book based on AMBIENT, too, summarizing my interest in indoor environments. However, book writing takes time, so it will probably take a few years before I have completed that project. ...

Today, I am officially entering “summer hibernation” mode and celebrating this with a blog post about this year’s summer message, which has now become a tradition (see 2023 and 2024). For me, the summer period, from mid-June to mid-August, is a critical time to focus on my own research activities (in addition to getting some vacation). The rest of the year is busy with leadership, management, teaching, supervision, and other responsibilities. During the summer, I can do many things that I don’t typically have time to do during the busy semesters. To explain what I am doing when I am away for more time than a regular vacation, I have written a message that is a bit longer than usual: ...

Today is midsummer, and with that I enter “summer mode”. A year ago, I wrote about why I chose to make an explanatory tripnote. Nowadays, most people are never really offline. Still, we all need time off. For me, that includes doing many things that I don’t typically have time to during the busy semesters. I received many positive comments on my tripnote last year, so I decided to make another this year. Here it is: ...

I read somewhere (but never stored the link) that people should add a more lengthy description in their trip notes (or vacation messages or whatever people call it) and decided to try it. Usually, I have only added a very brief message about when I return, but I think the point of adding a longer one is to explain why one cannot be as accessible as one usually may be. ...

At RITMO, we have several different disciplines working together. The three core disciplines at RITMO are musicology, psychology, and informatics. In addition, we have people working in philosophy, physics, computer science, biology, dance studies, and so on. This also means that we have several different publication cultures. In this blog post, I will reflect on the differences between them. The Paper Proceedings Culture My professorship is in music technology. I don’t know if music technology should be considered a discipline; it might be better described as a community of communities. Music technologists have different types of backgrounds and work in many different institutions. RITMO has music technologists from musicology (the Faculty of Humanities) and informatics (the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences). The latter builds on what I call a paper proceedings publication culture. Informatics, computer science, and various types of engineering are fast-moving fields that often publish in what is called “conference proceedings”. ...

What does a professor do? Children often ask good questions, and this one came from my youngest daughter while I was sitting in front of my laptop one day. Well, what does a professor actually do? I cannot speak for all professors, but in this blog post, I will reflect on some of the things I do as a professor. A Job and a Title In Norway, being a professor is both a job and a title. You can have the title of professor without necessarily working as a professor at a university. Retired professors keep their title even after ending their formal work life. Some people may have also been evaluated as entitled to professor competency even though they never worked as a professor. ...