Sustainability
Looking beyond technical solutions to the habits, values and institutions that make transitions possible, difficult or uneven.
International research partnership
SoMaT: Sociomaterial Transformations in Norway and East Asia
SoMaT begins with a simple idea: social life and material life cannot be separated. Digital platforms, energy systems, buildings, machines and forms of expertise do not merely surround us. They shape how people work, move, belong and imagine the future.
Why this project matters
The project brings a Humanities-based Science and Technology Studies perspective to three urgent themes: sustainability, digitalisation and diversity. Rather than treating these as universal processes that unfold in the same way everywhere, SoMaT asks how they take shape in specific institutions, cultures and everyday settings across Norway and East Asia.
Digitalisation
Studying how digital systems enter ordinary life and how people interpret, adapt and sometimes resist them.
Diversity
Asking who is included in technological futures, whose knowledge counts and how difference becomes visible.
Collaboration across contexts
SoMaT connects NTNU with the Institute of Science Tokyo, KAIST, Tsinghua University and the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences. Research visits, workshops and teaching activities make collaboration an active part of the research. Comparison is not about ranking one context against another. It is a way of noticing assumptions that can be difficult to see when we remain at home.
My contribution
I bring perspectives from queer studies, cinema and screen studies, migration studies and East Asian cultural studies. These approaches help keep questions of representation, belonging and everyday experience close to discussions of technological change. I am especially interested in the stories through which new technologies become desirable, ordinary or contested.
For me, the most productive part of an international project is often the moment when familiar concepts begin to feel unfamiliar. That is where new questions emerge.