Currently, I am involved in two research projects

Tackling Precarious and Informal Work in the Nordic Countries (PrecaNord), led by Lena Näre (University of Helsinki) part of the Future Challenges in the Nordics Research Programme.

The project “Tackling Precarious and Informal Work in the Nordic Countries” (PrecaNord) examines the sustainability of the Nordic model by offering an integrated analysis of precarious and informal work in Finland, Norway and Sweden. Precarious jobs include jobs that are associated with uncertainty and wherein the employee bears the risk.

Through a mixed-methods and multi-level research design, we explore the prevalence, trends, drivers, and consequences of precarious and informal work for workers, employers, and society. We further aim to advance conceptual and theoretical approaches to how to study and understand precarious and informal work across the Nordics.

The project runs from 2022-2026. It is funded by the programme Future Challenges in the Nordics and is a collaboration among researchers from The University of Helsinki, Lund University, Stockholm University and The University of Bergen.

 For more information see video presentation.

Sudan-Norway Academic Cooperation (SNAC), led by Liv Tønnessen (Chr. Michelsen Institute) and Tamer Abdelkareem (Khartoum University)

The SNAC project is a collaboration between Sudanese and Norwegian academic institutions. We aim to contribute to high quality research and policy development on current challenges facing Sudan.

Within the SNAC umbrella, I am involved in two smaller research projects:

Gendered and Classed Livelihood Strategies among Recently Displaced Sudanese women in Cairo, co-lead with Randa Gindeel (Ahfad University of Women).

In this project, we explore the experiences of Sudanese women who have fled to Egypt during the ongoing war in Sudan. We focus on middle- and upper-class women who have established businesses in Cairo and explore how they navigate gender and class through business ownership in the context of war and displacement. We find that the women's businesses play an important role in the ways in which they cope with the trauma of war and protracted displacement, and that the business becomes a vehicle to assert class and challenge gender relations. While providing an important focus on non-economic outcomes of immigrant entrepreneurship, we also contribute to an emerging body of research that challenges the notion of refugees and displaced people as poor and class-less.

and

Gendered Trade Transitions in Turbulent Times: Navigating Livelihood Opportunities in the Red Sea State Amidst War and Displacement, led by Randa Gindeel, (Ahfad University of Women).

The main objective is to examine the lived experiences of trade in the corridor between Egypt, Oseif, and Port Sudan in the context of war and displacement. We seek to identify changes in trade patterns and their impact on livelihood opportunities and wellbeing among women and men affected by the ongoing war, some of them also forcibly (internally or transnationally) displaced, or deported back to Sudan. 

I defended my PhD dissertation in 2021: A Culinary Quest: Peruvian Women Entrepreneurs in Southern California Negotiating Gender, Home, and Belonging

A complex context of reception shapes culinary business ownership among Peruvian immigrants in Southern California, where xenophobic portrayals of Latinxs exist alongside positive discourses on immigration. Simultaneously, Peruvians encounter a favorable opportunity structure for culinary entrepreneurs, as the recent gastronomic boom in Peru has placed Peruvian cuisine on the top of culinary hierarchies, and Peruvian food has garnered high status internationally. This is the first study to document the development of a growing Peruvian gastronomic scene in Southern California. With a focus on Peruvian immigrant women who have established culinary businesses in the area, it argues that women play an important role in shaping the Peruvian culinary scene, as they establish a variety of food ventures in the formal as well as in the informal economic sector. By elucidating how the women negotiate gender, home, and belonging through culinary entrepreneurship, I extend scholarship on so-called ethnic entrepreneurship and shift the center of attention from economic incorporation and entrepreneurs as mainly economic actors to a focus on spatial practices, non-economic business outcomes, and broader processes of immigrant settlement.

To understand these complex dynamics of immigrant business ventures, I employ qualitative methods, including life-history interviews with Peruvian women entrepreneurs as well as ten months of ethnographic fieldwork comprising the women’s businesses and the broader Peruvian immigrant communities in the area. By drawing on novel insight on home as a lens to understand immigrant settlement, and bringing this into conversation with the ethnic entrepreneurship literature, the study offers a new and more comprehensive framework—the nested approach to immigrant and ethnic entrepreneurship. Building on previous theorization that emphasizes how individual-, group-, and macro-level factors facilitate and constrain entrepreneurship, and on recent efforts to employ an intersectional lens to the field, I add important socio-spatial dimensions with an emphasis on how immigrants’ entrepreneurial practices are nested within larger life projects and the search for home and belonging. Hence, this study broadens our understanding of the entrepreneur’s social embeddedness, and by lifting the gaze beyond the economy and the market, I find important intersections between the private/family and the public/work sphere.

Moving beyond comparative male/female frameworks that often emphasize women entrepreneurs’ marginalized position relative to men, I find that under certain circumstances women also benefit from their gendered location and bargain with patriarchy as they draw on culinary skills to occupy roles as head of independent and family businesses. By paying attention to life course and to spatial practices, I further demonstrate that motherhood informs entrepreneurial practices. Mothering responsibilities shape how the women navigate informality/formality and how they transgress socially constructed boundaries between the private and the public sphere and contest deeply ingrained gendered inequalities in a capitalist economic system constructed around a male template.

The nested approach emphasizes immigrant home-making and place-making. Through their businesses, Peruvian immigrant culinary entrepreneurs contribute to shaping local environments. Control over a space in culinary markets allows them to reproduce the “homeland” and create home-like places in a migrant context. As Peruvians in an area shaped by large-scale Mexican immigration and by xenophobic stereotypes of Latinx immigrants, they draw on the status of Peruvian food to negotiate inclusion through distinction and claim the right to membership of the urban community. The recognition and character of such distinction, however, is negotiated in the encounter with the established population, but also with other immigrant groups, as well as with other Peruvians. Hence, culinary entrepreneurship arises as a powerful tool that immigrants draw on to make sense of who they are in a migrant context.

I am a board member of Nordic Migration Research and Norwegian Network of Migration Researchers. I am also an active member of International Migration and Ethnic Relations Research Unit in Bergen (IMER Bergen), where I previously led the IMER Bergen junior scholar network.

My work has been published in leading journals and reputable academic presses, including Ethnic and Racial Studies, Routledge and De Gruyter Brill. I also engage actively in public debate and have written a range of opinion pieces on migration, gender and precarious work. In addition, I am regularly invited to speak at national and international events organized by public institutions and civil society organizations.

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin & Synnøve Bendixsen. 2025. “Ikke dårlige jobber, men dårlige arbeidsvilkår.” In Dagsavisen. September 2, 2025. https://www.dagsavisen.no/debatt/ikke-darlige-jobber-men-darlige-arbeidsvilkar/9935835

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin & Synnøve Bendixsen. 2025. “De presses inn i dårlige arbeidsforhold.” In Dagsavisen. August 26, 2025. https://www.dagsavisen.no/debatt/de-presses-inn-i-darlige-arbeidsforhold/9923985

Gindeel, Randa Hamza Ibrahim & Ann Cathrin Corrales-Øverlid. 2025. “Entrepreneurship as Resilience: Sudanese Women, Displacement, and the Remaking of Home in Exile.” In African Arguments: Debating Ideas. June 5, 2025. https://africanarguments.org/2025/06/entrepreneurship-as-resilience-sudanese-women-displacement-and-the-remaking-of-home-in-exile/

Norbakk, Mari, Munzoul Assal & Ann Cathrin Corrales-Øverlid. 2024. “Introduction to migration and forced displacement studies: Global, regional, and Sudanese perspectives.” Chr. Michelsen Institute. (online resource) https://www.cmi.no/resources/264-migration-and-forced-displacement-studies

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin. 2019. “Lørdags(u)hygge: Når døden i Middlehavet skyller inn i stuen.” In Dagsavisen. January 24, 2019. https://www.dagsavisen.no/debatt/lordags-u-hygge-nar-doden-i-middelhavet-skyller-inn-i-stuen-1.1266704

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin. 2017. “Alternativ feminisme”. In Morgenbladet. October 17, 2017. https://morgenbladet.no/2017/10/alternativ-feminisme

Teaching at the Department for foreign languages, The University of Bergen:

SPLA100: Introduction to Spanish and Latin American Studies

SPLA109: Latin American History

Teaching at the Department of Health Promotion and Development, The University of Bergen:

GLODE305: Gender Analysis in Global Development - Core Perspectives and Issues

GLODE307: Development Practice

Teaching at the Department of Social Anthropology:

SANT260: Bachelor's Assignment (supervisor)

Guest lectures:

"Immigrant and Ethnic Entrepreneurship" in American Studies 101: Race and Class in Los Angeles. Department of American Studies and Ethnicity. University of Southern California. April 10, 2018.

"Intersectionality: Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality" in SABV260: Socio-cultural diversity and social inequalities in social work. Department of Welfare and Participation, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. April 22, 2022.

Supervision:

I am currently co-supervising a PhD candidate: Guro Aasen at centre for Care Research, West, at Western Norway University of Applied Sciences. She is a PhD candidate in the project On Equal Grounds? Migrant Women's Participation in Labour and Labour Related Activities (EQUALPARTS).

In addition, I have supervised four M.A. theses and 20 bachelor theses.

Academic Articles:

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin, Olivia Maury & Rasmus Ahlstrand. n.d. “Compounded (dis)embeddedness: Migrants’ ambivalent experiences of platform mediated gig-work in the Nordics”. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies. (Under review)

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin & Alejandro Miranda Nieto. 2025. “Trayectorias Laborales, Precariedad Existencial y Sentido de Hogar entre Migrantes Latinoamericanos en Noruega [Labor Trajectories, Existential Precarity and a Sense of Home among Latin Amerikcan Migrants in Norway].” In América Latina en Noruega. Producción lingüística, literaria y cultural de una comunidad migrante. Roxana Sobrino & Alissa Vik (eds.). De Gruyter Brill.

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin. 2024. “Sensory (Re)enactments of Home: Culinary Heritage-making among Peruvians in Southern California.” In Cultural Heritage and Mobility From a Multisensory Perspective. Eds. Karolina Nikielska-Sekula & Magdalena Banaszkiewicz. Routledge. 

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin. 2024. “’Alle vet at Norge er best’: Kampen mot prekære og utnyttende arbeidsforhold i det norske arbeidslivet og velferdssamfunnet.” Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift. (35)3-4, 217-235. https://doi.org/10.18261/nat.35.3-4.7.

Bendixsen, Synnøve & Ann Cathrin Corrales-Øverlid. 2024. “Velferdsstatens nådeløse optimisme”. Norsk Antropologisk Tidsskrift. (35)3-4, 129–147. https://doi.org/10.18261/nat.35.3-4.2.

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin. 2023. “Food as a Social Weapon: Peruvian Immigrant Entrepreneurs Claiming Home, Belonging, and Distinction in Southern California.” Ethnic and Racial Studies. https://doi.org/10.1080/01419870.2023.2193244

Conference Presentations and Invited Lectures:

2025

“Forcibly Displaced Sudanese Women in Cairo Navigating Loss, Reconstructing Identity, and Reconfiguring Gender Relations”

• Paper presented at panel “Reshaping social classes, gender and family relations in exile” at Lives in Displacement: Sudanese Experiences in Egypt since April 2023 (Conference), CEDEJ Khartoum/Institut français d'Égypte, Cairo, Egypt. November 2.

“’When I come in here, I forget everything’ Forcibly displaced Sudanese women coping with war, reproducing class status and challenging gender relations through business ownership”

• Paper presented at panel “Sudan: From Revolution Through War, the Complexity of Life on the Edge(s)” at The 13th Nordic Conference on Middle Eastern and Islamic Studies: A new world order – a new Middle East? (Conference), University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway. September 25.

“The Cruel Optimism of the Welfare State: The Paradox of the Norwegian Welfare State and Precarious Labor Conditions”

• Paper presented at panel “Labour 2” at Symposium on Precarities and Temporalities in Migratory Contexts (Symposium), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. August 27.

“Precarious Work, Precarious Lives? How Migrant Workers in Norway Weave Life-narratives and Build a Sense of Home”

• Paper presented at panel “Home & Hospitality” at Symposium on Precarities and Temporalities in Migratory Contexts (Symposium), University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland. August 27.

2024

“Utfordringer og perspektiv på migrasjon i dag [Challenges and Perspectives on Migration Today]”.

• Public talk at Migrasjonskonferansen 2024, organized by Vestland innvandrerråd, Bergen, Norway, December 18.

“Erfaringer fra praksis [Experiences from the practice field]”

• Panel debate at seminar “Hvorfor klarer migranter i Bergen seg så bra? – Og hva kan vi lære av det? [Why do migrants in Bergen fare so well? – And what can we learn from it?”], organized by Vestland krysskulturelle brobyggertjeneste, Bergen, Norway, December 18.

“Work-related crime” or migrant labour exploitation? EU-migrants’ struggles against precarious and exploitative labor relations in Norway”

• Paper presented at Comparative Political Economy Seminar, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway, September 23.

“Informality within the formal: Informalizing processes and exploitation within highly regulated and protected labor markets.”

• Paper presented with Rasmus Ahlstrand and Olivia Maury at panel “Experiencing and Representing Precariousness: Emerging Labour Configurations and Worker Agency” at the 16^th European Sociological Association Conference 2024: Tension, Trust and Transformation (Conference); University of Porto, Porto, Portugal. August 30.

“How Compounded Precarities Shape the Exploitation of Migrant Workers in the Nordics.”

• Paper presented with Lena Näre at panel “Migrant Workers’ Multiple Precarities” at Nordic Migration Research Conference 2024: The politics of mobility and precarity – and the alternatives (Conference); University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. August 16.

“Gendered and Classed Livelihood Strategies among Recently Displaced Sudanese Women in Cairo”

• Paper presented with Randa Gindeel at panel “Navigating Intersectionality in Displacement: Sudanese Displacement Post-2023 Conflict” at Nordic Migration Research Conference 2024: The politics of mobility and precarity – and the alternatives (Conference); University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. August 15.

“Navigating the Precarity Spiral: Migrant workers in Norway seeking ‘emancipatory belonging’ and imagining alternative futures.”

• Paper presented at panel “Precarious lifestyles: underemployment, emotional damage, and relational vulnerability in neoliberal labour markets” at European Anthropological Studies Association Biennal Conference 2024: Doing and Undoing with Anthropology (Conference); University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain. July 23.

“Peruvian Immigrant women in the U.S.: Turning Public Spaces into ‘Our Place’.”

• Paper presented at panel “Home as metaphor: Exploring emotional, material and heuristic dimensions of migration, Part 1” at 21^st IMISCOE Annual Conference 2024: Migration as a Social Construction: A Reflexive Turn (Conference); Iscte - University Institute of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal (Online). July 2.

“Intersectionality: Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality”. 

• Invited Guest Lecturer in undergraduate course aSocio-cultural diversity and societal inequalities in social work (SABV 260), Department of Welfare and Participation, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences; Bergen, Norway. April 10.

“I randsonen av den nordiske modellen: Prekært og uformelt arbeid i Norge.”

• Paper presented at research seminar “Bærekraftig arbeidsinkludering for og med migranter: Hvordan påvirker ulik arbeidstilknytning migranters helse, tilhørighet og tillit til samfunnet?”; Western Norway University of Applied Sciences - HVL, Bergen, Norway. April 5.

2023

“‘Det brenner litt under den norske modellen’, men hvem skal vi ‘redde’? Migranters erfaringer på det norske arbeidsmarkedet i lys av tiltak mot sosial dumping og arbeidslivskriminalitet.”

• Paper presented at workshop “Anthropological perspectives on precarious and informal work” at Antropologikonferansen 2023: Omveltninger (Conference); Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway. November 30.

“Unserious”/criminal actors or precarious workers? EU Migrants on the margins of the Nordic Model”

• Paper presented at session “Migrant and racialised perspectives to precarity” at “Critical Perspectives on Precarious and Informal Work” (Conference); The University of Helsinki, Finland, August 25.

“A Threat or Someone to Protect? EU Migrant Workers in the Shadows of the Nordic Model, the Norwegian Labor Market, and (Welfare) Citizenship”.

• Paper presented at “Mobilities, (welfare) citizenship and the changing nature of work” (Workshop); The University of Reykjavik, Iceland, August 10.

“Simultaneous processes of informalization and formalization: Experiences from platform work in Norway”.

• Paper presented at session “Dynamics of (In)Formalization Under Platform Capitalism” at “Global Perspectives on Platform, Labor and Social Reproduction” (Conference); The University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands, June 28.

“Labor, Capital, and Borders: Structures of Domination in the Shadows of Freedom of Movement.”

• Paper presented at “Immobility and Movements Across Contested Temporalities and Spaces” (Workshop); The University of Bergen, Norway, June 19.

“Intersectionality: Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality”. 

• Invited Guest Lecturer in undergraduate course aSocio-cultural diversity and societal inequalities in social work (SABV 260), Department of Welfare and Participation, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences; Bergen, Norway. April 12.

“At the Margins of the Nordic Model? Experiences of Precarious and Informal Work in Norway.”

• Paper presented at session “Precarious positions, informal work and multiple jobs” at Work and Welfare in the Digital Age (Workshop); Lund University, Sweden. January 10.

2022

"I randsonen av den nordiske modellen? Erfaringer fra prekært og uformelt arbeid i Norge."

• Paper presented at the network symposium "Integrering av arbeidsinnvandrere i Norge Er det behov for en ny politikk?" at Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Oslo, Norway. December 15.

“At the Margins of the Nordic Model? Experiences of Precarious and Informal Work in Norway”.

• Paper presented at Bergen Anthropology Day; Bergen, Norway. September 29.

"A Home in the Public: Peruvian Women Culinary Entrepreneurs in Southern California".

• Paper presented at session "Latinxs Sharing Spaces, Sharing Stories 1" at LASA2022 Congress: Polarización socioambiental y rivalidad entre grandes potencias; Online. May 6. 

“Intersectionality: Race, Ethnicity, and Inequality”. 

• Invited Guest Lecturer in undergraduate course aSocio-cultural diversity and societal inequalities in social work (SABV 260), Department of Welfare and Participation, Western Norway University of Applied Sciences; Bergen, Norway. April 22.

2021

“Navigating Media Discourses and Digital Practices: Peruvian Immigrant Women’s Culinary Entrepreneurship in Southern California”.

• Paper presented at session “Migrant Digital Food Practices” at Migrant Belongings: Digital Practices and the Everyday; Online. April 23.

“Home-making in the Public: Peruvian Immigrant Women’s Culinary Entrepreneurship in Southern California”.

• Paper presented at session “Exploring Nordic Migrant Entrepreneurship: Intersectional Understandings of Place and Context” at the 20^th Nordic Migration Research Conference and 17^th ETMU Conference; Online. January 12.

2020

“Home-making in the Public: Peruvian Immigrant Women’s Culinary Entrepreneurship in Southern California”.

• Paper presented at session “The Liminal State of Home” at the Hjem 2020 Conference; University of Bergen, Norway. September 24-25. 

2019

“A Culinary Quest: Peruvian Women Entrepreneurs in Southern California Negotiating Home and Belonging”. 

• Paper presented at session “Home and the Senses”, at the “HOMinG symposium – HOMinG: Displacement, suspension, projections and achievements in making home on the move”; Trento, Italy. June 3-4.
• Paper presented at session “Gendered Migration and Displacement”, at the “LASA2019 – Nuestra América: Justice & Inclusion” Conference; Boston, USA. May 24-27.

2018

“A Culinary Quest: Peruvian Women Entrepreneurs Negotiating Home and Belonging."

• Paper presented at session “Gender, inequality, spatial mobility and social change”, at the “NOLAN2018: Epochal shifts in current Latin America?” Conference; Oslo, Norway. October 25-26.

“A Culinary Quest: Peruvian Women Entrepreneurs Negotiating Gender and Home. 

• Paper presented at workshop “Everyday strategies of citizenship and belonging”, at the 10^th Nordic Migration Research Conference “New (Im)mobilities: Migration and Race in the Era of Authoritarianism”; Norrköping, Sweden. August 15-17.
• Paper presented at Formal Paper session “Immigration and Women”, at the Annual Conference of the Pacific Sociological Association; Long Beach, USA. March 28-31.

2017

“Immigrant Entrepreneurship: An Intersectionality Approach”. 

• Invited Guest Lecturer in undergraduate course Race and Class in Los Angeles (AMST 101), Department of American Studies and Ethnicity, University of Southern California; Los Angeles, USA. November 9.

PhD Dissertation:

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin, 2021. "A Culinary Quest: Peruvian Women Entrepreneurs in Southern California Negotiating Gender, Home, and Belonging." Doctoral degree Monograph, Department of Foreign Languages, The University of Bergen. https://bora.uib.no/bora-xmlui/handle/11250/2754557. 

Master's thesis:

Corrales-Øverlid, Ann Cathrin. 2009. "El impacto económico y social del microcrédito: Un estudio de caso de las prestatarias de la ONG MIDE ´la Ch´uspa´en Santa Cruz de Sallac, Peru." Master's degree Thesis, Department of Foreign Languages, The University of Bergen. https://bora.uib.no/bora-xmlui/handle/1956/3829.

Tackling Precarious and Informal Work in the Nordic Countries

Sudan-Norway Academic Cooperation (SNAC), including two smaller research projects:

• Gendered and Classed Livelihood Strategies among Recently Displaced Sudanese women in Cairo.
• Gendered Trade Transitions in Turbulent Times: Navigating Livelihood Opportunities in the Red Sea State Amidst War and Displacement.

Ph.D.project: A Culinary Quest: Peruvian Women Entrepreneurs in Southern California Negotiating Gender, Home, and Belonging