Job description

 

 Welcome to my personal website at UiT.no!

Hello! I am a guy in the middle of life and who works as associate professor in philosophy at the Institute of Philosophy at UiT. I teach both examen philosophicum and at the philosophy programs (bachelor and master). As a researcher, I work primarily within the following areas:

the philosophy of life and -death, the philosophy of love, ethics and meta-ethics, metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of action and -religion and aesthetics.

 

Primary Interests

In general, I am interested in practical philosophy and questions that touches on significant aspects of our existence. Practical philosophy thereby engages with topics that may potentially alter the way we live. It could be questions about the quality of life or the good life, meaningfulness, happiness, love and sexuality, how we ethically speaking ought to live and how we should deal with the fact that we are mortal and vulnerable beings. In light of this I have interests in topics like the metaphysics of death, the meaning of life, evil, the nature of intentional actions and -knowledge/insight, religion and spirituality, as well as different forms of normativity and rationality, and questions concerning the normative authority of ethics.

In these days, I am particularly occupied with death and what it means for us. I am working on a project I call "The Meaning of Death", where the main issue is how vi shold live in light of the fact that we are mortal beings who both know about and have to deal with our own mortality. Can we - and, if so, how can we - find meaning, value, happiness and significance in a life whose singlemost certain factor is that we at some point will inevitably vanish, die and witter away for good? In this project, I try to show that death is not only a threat toward our lives, but also one of the more central components for making life meaningfull and valuable.

 

Positions

I am second-in-command at the Institute of Philosophy (IFF) and is in charge of the examen philosophicum at UiT. I am also member of the board that directs and develops the Bachelor- and Master program in philosophy at IFF. In addition, I am leading one of the institute's research groups - Ethics Research Group (ERG).

 

Off-campus I write for Store Norske Leksikon (snl.no) and occasionaly do blogging (Arktisk Metafysikk) plus engange in an occasional book project or two. I also have a small company - Holmen Meningsproduksjon - that may be used as a label for off-campus seminars.

  

Membership in Research Groups

2013 - today Ethics Research Group, UiT.

https://en.uit.no/forskning/forskningsgrupper/gruppe?p_document_id=344701

2017 - today The International Association for the Philosophy of Death and Dying (IAPDD)

https://www.philosophyofdeath.org/

2019 - today Death: Emotions, Relations and Culture (DERC)

2017 - today Phenomenology and Bodies of Knowledge - UiT

2016 - today Nordic Network of Metaphysics

https://nordicmetaphysics.org/

2017 - 2019 today Feminist Philosophy Research Group (FemPhil) - UiT

2014 - 2017 Pluralism, Democracy and Justice Research Group - UiT

https://en.uit.no/forskning/forskningsgrupper/gruppe?p_document_id=354207

 

2010 - d.d. Affiliated at CSMN, UiO.

2007 - 2010 CSMN's Rational Agency Group, UiO,