Head of Department

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. ...

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. ...

I have written a short article for the latest edition of LINK, the magazine of the European Association of Research Managers and Administrators. Self-archiving here. Towards Convergence in Research Assessment Open Science is on everyone’s lips these days. There are many reasons why this shift is necessary and wanted, and also several hurdles. One big challenge is the lack of incentives and rewards. Underlying this is the question of what we want to incentivize and reward, which ultimately boils down to the way we assess research and researchers. This is not a small thing. After all, we are talking about the cornerstone of people’s careers, whether an inspiring academic gets a job, promotion, and project funding. ...

As Head of the Department of Musicology for the last four years, I have been acquainted with the inner workings of the University of Oslo (UiO). Before, I mainly looked at the university from the perspective of a researcher and educator. Now I have been involved in issues at all three “levels”: department, faculty, and central. I have also collaborated a lot more with all parts of the administration: studies, research, IT, economy, communication, archive, and HR. In general, I am impressed by what is going on “behind the scenes”. But there are also some challenges with the way things are currently organized, which I believe hinders progress. In this blog post, I will elaborate on some of these topics. ...

After four years as Head of Department (of Musicology at UiO), I am going back to my regular associate professor position in January. It has been a both challenging and rewarding period as HoD, during which I have learned a lot about managing people, managing budgets, understanding huge organizations, developing strategies, talking to all sorts of people at all levels in the system, and much more. I am happy to hand over a Department in growth to the new HoD (Peter Edwards). We have implemented a new bachelor’s program, launched UiO’s first MOOC (Music Moves), and hired a number of new people, just to mention a few of the things I have worked on over the last years. I am also proud that we just got our new appointment plan approved before Christmas, aiming at hiring up to seven new professors within the next five years. Humanities departments are under a lot of pressure these days, so I am very grateful that we are in a position to expand in the coming years! ...

[As I have mentioned previously, life has been quite hectic over the last year, becoming Head of Department at the same time as getting my second daughter. So my research activities have slowed down considerably, and also the activity on this blog.]{style=“line-height: 1.5;”} When it comes to blogging, I have focused on building up my Head of Department blog (in Norwegian), which I use to comment on things happening in the Department as well as relevant (university) political issues. My longterm plan, though, is also to write some posts about being Head of Department on this English-language blog. ...

I am happy to say that I have already completed my first and only new year’s resolution this year: getting rid of my Facebook account. It turned out to be much easier than expected, as there is a separate, easily accessible delete account page on Facebook. I just had to type my password and a captcha and that was it. Now my Facebook account is disabled, and will be permanently deleted after 14 days. What a relief! ...

Today I start as Head of Department of Musicology at the University of Oslo! One of the things I promised in my application was to set up a Head of Department blog, and I am happy to announce that the first entry was posted this morning. I am thrilled and excited to get the opportunity to lead the institution that I have both studied and worked at for more than a decade. The department is the smallest in the Faculty of Humanities in Oslo, but it is the largest musicology department within the Nordic countries, and fairly large also in an international context. ...