Lund is already a familiar face at STK, as she has been a postdoctoral research fellow at the centre since 2019. The researcher completed her doctoral degree in organization studies at the University of Aalto in 2015, and before coming to STK held postdoctoral positions at Aarhus University and Tampere University.
The connections between knowledge production, social relations and social inequalities form a throughline in Lund's research. Her work considers which forms of knowledge are seen as valuable and legitimate, and how this reproduces inequalities relating to gender, class, and ethnicity.
Competition and feelings in academia
In her postdoctoral position at STK, Lund has led the NFR-financed Resonance Project. The project looks at how transformations in academic culture and governance in Norway in the last two decades have affected researchers in different stages of their careers.
–My research has been orientated towards understanding the gendered conditions for knowledge production and recognition in the competition-orientated university, but also how researchers create space for meaningful work, creativity, and nurturing interpersonal relationships. This can be seen as a form of resistance towards academic capitalism and objectification, Lund explains.
–Affect, emotions, and feelings play an important role in my work on these themes, and in recent years I have become increasingly interested in psychosocial theories, which have been central to the Resonance Project.
A proponent of institutional ethnography
An important strand in Lund's research has been immersing herself in and further developing the methodological approach Institutional ethnography (IE), which was originally developed by the Canadian sociologist Dorothy Smith.
Institutional ethnography uses everyday experience as its starting point, and explores how these experiences are formed by social and institutional relations. The approach considers how the things we do and experience in our daily lives are shaped by dominant ways of thinking, and how these social forces might be challenged.
This methodological perspective has gained increased attention in recent years. As a postdoctoral fellow at STK, Lund organized a digital PhD course in IE. The course attracted early-career researchers from Norway and abroad.
In her further development of IE, Lund has been especially interested in the approach's theoretical roots in amongst other things historical materialism. Historical materialism is associated with the theories of Karl Marx. It emphasizes how human activity shapes societal developments, not least economic developments, and conversely how these developments shape people's understandings of themselves. A central aspect of this has been an understanding and criticism of the institutionalizing social structures and practices that result from capitalism.
–I am very interested in exploring what the historical materialist perspective - which is already built into IE - means for the kinds of research we can do on questions regarding for example intersectionality, or environmental degradation. Relatedly, I am interested in newer philosophical explorations of Marx's thoughts on nature and ecology, and the relation between nature and society.
Ecological perspectives
Recently, Lund's research interests have also moved towards questions relating to the environment and sustainability. The researcher has already participated in a Circle U project on sustainable university pedagogy.
This spring, she will be teaching «KFL2055: Gender, Race, Class and Sustainability», a course she has developed as part of UiO's sustainability certificate.
–Lately, my interests have turned towards ecofeminism and ecological thinking, and the development of what you could call "feminist-historical-ecologial-materialism". I am interested in how the ways in which we access and create knowledge might promote or hinder sustainable relations between people, and between people and non-human nature and other species, the researcher explains.
Clearly, Lund's research on questions relating to knowledge production have a relevance that reaches far beyond the context of academia. How we produce knowledge, and which people are seen as trustworthy bearers of knowledge, are also important starting points when we seek to understand how individuals and societies relate to climate change and environmental degradation.
STK as an important voice
The new associate professor's theoretical, empirical, and methodological interests represent a new and important contribution to the permanent academic staff at STK, and the centre's research and teaching profile.
–I hope that I can also help to promote the centre's role as an important voice in current debates at the University of Oslo, in Norway, and internationally, Lund concludes.