phd-projects

This project is situated within the field of higher education assessment. It investigates how evaluative judgements – decisions about the quality of student work – are shaped and enacted in settings of social moderation, where examiners meet to collaboratively assess student work through discussion and negotiation. The project uses the assessment of bachelor’s theses at the Norwegian Police University College (NPUC) as empirical context and draws on observational data from early calibration meetings for all examiners, later co-grading meetings involving examiner pairs, and focus group interviews. The aim is to develop new knowledge about the usually hidden processes behind grading decisions and offer implications for policy and practice in enhancing fairness and consistency in assessment.

This PhD project examines grooming, a gradual process of manipulation in which an adult perpetrator builds trust and emotional attachment to exploit the other person sexually or financially. It connects two fields rarely studied together: online sexual exploitation and abuse of children, and online dating romance frauds and scams targeting adults. It asks what makes grooming possible and what promotes or inhibits its success across individuals, relationships, digital platforms and society. The aim is to contribute to better prevention, investigation and support for those affected.

The purpose of the project is to investigate the legal framework for the police's use of firearms, especially where these frameworks in practice turn out to be unclear.

The project consists of two different studies that look at physical fitness and degree of activation (measured through pulse, pulse variation and breathing) to gain more knowledge about stress and decision-making in operational settings. Both studies are conducted as realistic experiments on experienced police officers. Studies 1 and 2 also look at whether the police's use of force is affected by mental illness in the person to whom the assignment applies.

My project examines how liberal democracies address political extremism in their efforts to prevent political violence and terrorism. It explores how prevention in this field allows for the expansion of state control and the tensions this creates with democratic principles and civil liberties. The research aims to understand when, how, and why some democracies go further than others (liberal-democratic overreach) in their preventive efforts.

The project examines prosecutorial investigative leadership as practice. Drawing on Leadership-as-Practice (LAP) and Leadership-as-Practice Development (LaPD), it seeks to generate new knowledge about how prosecutorial investigative leadership is enacted through concrete investigative practices. The study follows a qualitative case study design and uses observation, interviews, and document analysis. The overall aim is to improve the quality of police investigations.

The PhD project "Regulated Entities – Gatekeepers and Professional Enablers of Money Laundering" examines the extent to which entities subject to reporting obligations under the Anti-Money Laundering (AML) Act comply with AML regulations, and the degree to which the system effectively contributes to preventing and detecting profit-motivated crime.

Through three empirical articles, this thesis examines how stress is conceptualised and measured in policing and how methodological choices influence the credibility, coherence, and interpretability of empirical findings. It considers how changes in police work and organisational structures have shaped the context in which police stress is studied, while highlighting the increasing theoretical diversity within the field. This theoretical fragmentation, when not accompanied by corresponding methodological clarity, may weaken the quality and comparability of research findings. Aligning theoretical assumptions with measurement and analytical approaches can contribute to a more coherent understanding of stress in policing and enhance the relevance of research to the everyday realities of police work.

This project is founded on the underlying assumption that ways of thinking may influence the quality of decision-making in operational police work during critical incidents. The participants in the study are third-year students at the Norwegian Police University College. We have examined their their ways of thinking, their decision-making processes and the relationship between the two. Data was collected through questionnaires, behavioural observation during a simulated critical incident exercise, as well as debriefing sessions and in-depth interviews.

This project examines how crime varies across space and time in Oslo and to what extent these patterns are stable. The project is based on geocoded policeregister data and applies data-driven methods to analyse crime at a microgeographical level. The aim is to evaluate different statistical methods used in spatial crime analysis and predictive policing, with particular attention to their relevance and performance in a Norwegian context.