Ingrid Løland

Ingrid Løland has been employed as an associate professor at the University of Stavanger (Department of Cultural studies and Languages, Faculty of Educational Sciences and Humanities) since December 2024. Here she teaches in the bachelor's program of Religion, Culture and Society, and is responsible for subjects such as Judaism and Islam, theory and method in religious studies theory, as well as religion and human rights. She has previously been employed at VID Specialized University in Stavanger (2015-2024), where teaching and research assignments have been linked to the section for cultural and religious studies (KURV) and to the Center for Mission and Global Studies (SMG). Here she taught various subjects at bachelor's, master's and PhD levels at the institution, and contributed to the development of a new bachelor's degree program in social sustainability where she had coordination responsibility for the a specialization within Intercultural competence and social sustainability. She is also a long-standing member of the research group MIGREL (Migration, Religion and Intercultural Relations) where she functioned as deputy leader and leader from 2020-2024. Ingrid has a background as a historian of religion from the University of Oslo, in addition to several years of experience in migration and refugee work at home and abroad. Løland's doctorate at VID University of Applied Sciences was completed in 2020. The project focused on the Syrian revolution, civil war and subsequent refugee crisis and provided qualitative insight into lived experiences that deal with religion, identity and conflict in Syrian refugee narratives. The study used a time/space perspective as an analytical prism to contextualize a selection of stories from a heterogeneous Syrian exile population. By approaching migration experiences as a narrative landscape and discursive field, the research project has sought to show the different ways in which memories, metaphors and life-changing events are the subject of both shared and contested meaning-making. In continuation of her doctoral project, Ingrid has researched Syrian exile experiences and applied existential anthropology and arts-based research (ABR) to a deeper understanding of creative and literary processing of transnational trauma experiences among refugees. In addition to the intersection of religion and migration, Ingrid Løland's other research interests are related to culture and sustainability, environmental humanities, religion and politics, the Middle East region, minority history and intercultural communication.

Ecology anthropocen climate change
Human rights/minority rights
Lived religion
Cultural heritage
Online pedagogy
Identity and cultural complexity
Religion and Identity
Religious encounter
Syria
Political Islam
The Middle East and North Africa
Etniske relasjoner
Narrative research
Minority studies
Religion and Violent Conflict
Intercultural communication
Religion and migration
Transnationalism
Cultural sustainability
School education on religion or belief
Religion and Politics
Ethnicity and human rights