Edit

Sigrid Lien

Position

Professor, History of art/ history and theory of photography/ visual culture

Affiliation

Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies

E-mail: sigrid.lien@uib.no
Phone number: +47 55583201; +47 994 85 385
Visitor address: Sydnesplassen 7
5007 Bergen
Postal address: P.O. Box 7805

NO-5020 Bergen

Norway

Sigrid Lien

Position

Professor, History of art/ history and theory of photography/ visual culture

Affiliation

Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies

Research groups

Research Group Visual Culture

Research

Sigrid Lien is a professor of art history at the University of Bergen, where she has had a permanent position since 2002. Lien researches modern art and contemporary art, and also has expertise in the field of museology. However, her primary specialty is the history and theory of photography.

Lien's work has for years been centered on visual culture, and photography in particular. In the beginning of her academic career, she was the first to offer history and theory of photography as a university course in Norway. She initiated the first cross-disciplinary, nationally funded research project on photography, she wrote the first volume on Norwegian history of photography, and a pioneering study of the role of photography in the Norwegian history of migration. Photography has also, over the years, led her into the internationally expanding fields of museology, and post-and decolonial studies.

In Liens recent project Negotiating History: Photography in Sámi Culture, she have fronted a novel understanding of the Arctic as an inhabited space, collaborating extensively with the major international scholars in this field. Importantly, this research has also led her to explore how photography as visual culture is embedded in a wider context – a cluster of paradoxes and conflict lines that cuts through the Arctic. Furthermore, it has made her aware of the necessity to transcend specific scientific disciplinary borders and national boundaries – and thus to initiate a SFF-initiative as a first major humanities-driven attempt of understanding why and how the Arctic has become such a potent a site of concurrent visions of the past, future and present: Visions of the Arctic.

Teaching

Lien teaches modern art and contemporary art. Her primary specialty is the history and theory of photography.

Supervision of PhD-students:

2014–2017
Supervisor for Kjellaug Isaksen, Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway

2013–2015
Supervisor for Pauline Hoath, Department for Information and Media Studies, University of Bergen, Norway

2010–2015
Supervisor for Tove Haugsbø, Phd student, Art history, Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway

2010–2014
Supervisor for Anne Hege Simonsen, Phd student, Art history, Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway

2007–2011
Supervisor Christine Hansen, Phd student Art history, Department of Linguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway

2008–2012
Supervisor for Mathias Danbolt, Phd student, Art history, Department ofLinguistic, Literary and Aesthetic Studies, University of Bergen, Norway

Publications

Academic lecture