Sunniva is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Women's and Gender Research (SKOK). In their project, they investigate norms related to gender, sexuality, and the body, with a particular focus on fatness. Sunniva has an academic background from the University of Oslo and the University of Stavanger, holding a master’s degree in interdisciplinary gender studies and a bachelor’s degree in sociology.

In their PhD project, Sunniva particularly studies how fatness co-constitutes and upholds normative notions about gender and sexuality. What can we learn from the experiences and perspectives of fat people about the normative notions of gender and sexuality? When we take fatness seriously as an analytical category, it becomes clear that fatness is about more than just fat people. Through interviews with people who are or have been fat, Sunniva aims to contribute to more knowledge about the bodily frameworks that shape normative understandings of sexuality and gender.

Body norms and body pressure are something we can all face and experience the consequences of. Sunniva also emphasizes language, noting that there is no neutral language when we talk and write about fatness and fat people. How individuals speak about themselves and their experiences can tell us something about the normative frameworks for subject formation in relation to sexuality, gender, and the body.

This project is unique in Norway, as critical fat studies is not yet an established research field, and there is very little research in Norway on fat people that falls outside the scope of medical or health research. This is a project that seeks to help establish critical fat studies in a Norwegian context, as well as contribute to international research communities that emphasize fat perspectives and fat individuals’ own experiences in the context of gender and sexuality.

Sunniva has also been a research assistant for the research project EuroWARCHILD from 2021 to 2022, and as an extension of this work, they published a research article about Samí and Kven children born of war where they discuss the importance of including ethnicity and race as perspective in research on children born of war.

At SKOK, Sunniva is a member of the interdisciplinary and interfacultary research group Foundational Questions in Gender and Sexuality Research.

Sunniva is also a member of Queer Research Group at Kristiania University, and the research group Discourses of Gender and Sexuality at Western Norway University.

The last couple of years, Sunniva has actively communicated research about sexuality norms and asexuality in Norwegian media. They have also participated in several panels at Pride events.

Communication as PhD candidate at SKOK

• A travel letter - in solidarity from London. A travel letter written during a a stay as visiting researcher at the Centre for Social Justice Research, at the University of Westminster.
• Å være tjukk - en debatt om normer, fordommer og holdningsendring (Being fat - a debate about norms, prejudice and attitude change). Moderator and organizer of the annual SKOK debate, 04.03.2024
• A fatter gender and sexuality research. Interview on uib.no, 22.09.2023
• Den tjukke skeive kroppen (The fat queer body). Panel conversation during Skeivå - Rogaland Pride, 26.08.2023

At SKOK, Sunniva is the main lecturer and responsible for the course KVIK206 Gender, Sexuality and Fatness, as well as the seminar teacher in the course KVIK100 Kjønnsforskinga sine tenkjemåtar (Introduction to Gender Studies). Sunniva is also a guest lecturer in the courses KVIK102 Likestilling og Mangfold (Equality and Diversity) and KVIK103 Skeiv teori med internasjonal digital utveksling (Queer Theory with international digital exchange).

Sunniva has taught at both bachelor and master level at the University of Oslo. They have taught classes in gender, sexuality, equality and diversity, as well as theory of science and academic writing.

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

Sunniva's PhD project has the working title Sizing Up Desirable Bodies- Examining the fat-bodied boundaries of sexuality and gender.