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Sigrid Lien

Sigrid Lien

Position

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

Affiliation

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

Research groups

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
Exhibition production
Conference lecture
Academic book chapter
Academic article
Journal review
Media interview
Non-fiction book chapter
Media feature article
Doctoral thesis (PhD)
Professional article
Academic monograph
Lecture
Research report
Book anthology
Radio or TV participation
Editorial/Leader article
Master’s thesis
Popular science article
Non-fiction monograph
Exhibition catalogue
Introduction

See a complete overview of publications in Cristin.

Ten major publications:

My publications received the following major nominations and awards: Brageprisen 2007, Det norske Samlaget, publishers’ award 2007 and 2011

  • 2022 Sigrid Lien and Hilde Wallem Nielssen, “Knowing and not Knowing: Addressing Chinese Objects in the Art Museum”, Oxford Art Journal, vol.45, Issue 1.
  • 2021 Sigrid Lien and Hilde Wallem Nielssen, “Negotiating research: Studying Sámi Photographs as Norwegian Outsiders”, in: Laura Junka-Aikio, Veli-Pekka Lehtola, Jukka Nyyssönen, Sami Research, Abingdon: Routledge, (forthcoming).
  • 2021 Sigrid Lien: «Sámi silence visualised: Indigenous loss negotiated in contemporary art», in: Øivind Fuglerud et al (eds), Negotiating Memory from the Romans to the 21st Century — Damnatio Memoriae, Abingdon: Routledge.
  • 2020 Sigrid Lien: “Ragnhild’s Images: Migration, Settler Colonialism and Photography”, International Journal for History, Culture and Modernity, 1-22.
  • 2019 Sigrid Lien and Hilde Wallem Nielssen: “Permanent Displays’ as Unsettling Layers of Epistemologies, Politics and Aesthetics”, Museum & Society, 17(3).
  • 2018 Sigrid Lien: “Performing academic masculinity: Sophus Tromholt and Roland Bonaparte’s photographic accounts of Sámi people and northern landscapes”, Journal of Aesthetics and Culture, No 4 Special issue: Uses of Photography in Nordic and Arctic Indigenous Communities, guest editors: Sigrid Lien & Hilde Nielssen.
  • 2017 Sigrid Lien: ”Assimilating the Wild and Primitive: Lajla and other Sámi Heroines in Norwegian fin-de-siècle photography”, in Disturbing pasts: Memories, controversies and creativity, Manchester University Press.
  • 2015 Sigrid Lien: “Last seen alone on the prairie”: migration, photography, and the invisibility of women, in: Tanya Sheenan, Photography, History, Difference to Dartmouth College Press.
  • 2014 Sigrid Lien: “The Aesthetics of the Bear Hunt: Contemporary Photography in the Ecology of a Sámi Museum”, in Uncertain Images: Museums and the Work of Photographs. London: Ashgate.
  • 2012 Sigrid Lien and Hilde Nielssen: “Absence and Presence: The Work of Photographs in the Sami Museum, Norway”, Photography & Culture, Special Issue: Photographic Legacies: Addressing the Colonial Past in Europe (guest editors: Sigrid Lien, Elizabeth Edwards, Susan Legene), Vol.5, Issue 3, Nov.2012.
Projects

2018–2020
Co PI: Photography as Contact Zone: Migration & Cultural Encounters in America (funded by Terra Foundation). Publication, workshop and conference

2014–2017
Project leader: Negotiating History: Photography in Sámi Culture (funded by the Norwegian Research Council)

2010–2012
Project leader for Norwegian team: PhotoClec, Photographs, Colonial Legacy and Museums in Contemporary European Culture (a HERA-funded, European project)

2003–2007
Project member/ project leader: Fotografiet i kulturen (funded by the Norwegian Research Council)