Academic Life

The Open Graph standard has helped “automagically” collect information about partner events on MishMash.no. Now, we have started building a “who’s who” directory, and I have begun looking into how we can pre-populate pages from existing academic identity sources rather than asking everyone to fill out web forms. My first inclination was to look at what is available on institutional websites. Most researchers have at least one institutional personal website. In this blog post, I look at what can be retrieved from my UiO page. ...

This post has a simple mission: stop making template-based “title + bullet point”-style slides for your presentation. Yes, most presentation software suggests this as a default, but that doesn’t make it any better. Instead, think about your slides as complementary to what you are saying. Auditory–visual perception Human perception is inherently multimodal, meaning that we continuously experience the world with all our senses. In a presentation, that means the audience is processing your voice, your slides, your gestures, and the room itself as part of one combined experience. ...

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. ...

Many students conflate research design, protocol, and methods. This post aims to clarify these foundational concepts. Research Design A research design is the overarching blueprint for a scientific study. It outlines how you will collect, measure, and analyze data to answer your research question. Common designs include: Experimental Designs: Researchers manipulate variables to observe effects. For example, randomly assigning participants to listen to different genres of music and measuring their mood or cognitive performance. ...

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: ...

At RITMO retreats we often use case studies to discuss relevant topics. I have blogged about some of these before: the Coauthorship Case and Confession Case. This semester’s retreat focused on project development and management. I developed a new case study that was successfully used for group work and plenary discussion. A challenging project Consider the following scenario: Professor Penelope has received external funding to start a new interdisciplinary research project. Three recruits have been employed and will begin on 1 September: ...

Some years ago, I was heavily involved in the development of NOR-CAM (Norwegian Career Assessment Matrix), a framework designed to support the assessment and recognition of a broad range of academic activities and competencies. This work aimed to promote more comprehensive and transparent evaluation practices in academia. One thing is developing high-level policies; another is trying these things in practice. I am fortunate enough to direct a research centre (RITMO), which involves a significant amount of career development work daily. I was therefore pleased to be invited by the Coalition for Advancing Research Assessment (CoARA) to discuss my experiences with the NOR-CAM principles in an interdisciplinary setting. ...

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 have previously written about why I dislike footnotes. Here, I explain why I dislike numbered citations. Numbered citations Consider this text fragment (from this paper): Here, the numbered citations are not helpful. You need to scroll to the end of the paper to figure out wat they mean. In practice, I only do that when I really want to check the reference. Most of the time, I just ignore the citations. ...

I notice that the two terms methods and methodology are often mixed up. It is actually quite simple to remember the difference if you consider the etymology. The “-logy” part suggests that “methodology” concerns the knowledge of methods. Here is a quick run-down of how to differentiate between them in academic writing. A methods section in a paper In a conference paper or journal article, you typically want to describe the method you used. What data collection approach did you employ? What equipment did you use? What did you ask your participants to do? A methods section in a paper describes such things with a level of detail necessary for others to understand what you did. ...