Øystein Lund Johannessen

Øystein Lund Johannessen has a professional background as a primary school teacher, adviser and second language teacher for refugees and since 1992 researcher at the Centre for Intercultural Communication (SIK). He holds a PhD in Educational Sciences from the University of Stavanger and a Cand. Polit. / master’s degree in social Anthropology from the University of Bergen. At SIK, Lund Johannessen has worked as a researcher and consultant, senior researcher and administrative manager. He is now research professor in Intercultural Education. His professional involvement has been particularly in the fields of intercultural competence in public services, intercultural education and religious education. Within these fields, he has extensive experience as a leader and partner in projects designed according to principles from trailing research, action research and action learning. From 2007 to 2012, Lund Johannessen was head of one of two sub-projects in the RCN-funded action research project Religious education and diversity, where the participants were researchers and primary and lower secondary school teachers with practice in the field of religions-worldviews and ethics. His PhD thesis from 2015 was entitled Cultural competence in religious education? A study in religious education teachers’ practice in the religiously diverse classroom. Here the focus was (K)RLE teachers' work with student diversity in their own classes and the cultural awareness and intercultural competence they developed. From 2013-2018 Lund Johannessen was engaged in the international research project Religion and Dialogue in Modern Societies (ReDi) led by the Academie der Weltreligionen at the University of Hamburg (2013-2018). Together with colleagues at the University of Stavanger, he conducted research on interreligous activities and religious and philosophical dialogue in the Oslo area and in Western Norway, and on dialogue as a didactic tool in the subject of religion and ethics in upper secondary school. In recent years, Lund Johannessen has conducted research and published particularly within the thematic areas 1) religious education and diversity of religions and non-religious worldviews, 2) interreligious relations and dialogue, and 3) diversity and inclusion in education. From 2019 to 2023, he was a national representative in the COST Action network "Transnational Collaboration on Bullying, Migration and Integration at School Level" (TRIBES), where he was active in a working group that specifically researched the readiness and practices of schools, school owners, and school authorities regarding the inclusion of recently arrived migrants, as well as second language and subject support in schools. Since 2023, Johannessen has been a work package leader and member of the steering group in the NFR project "LIFE: Mastery of Life in Theory and Practice," led from the Learning Environment Center at UiS (https://www.uis.no/nb/laeringsmiljosenteret/forskning/life-livsmestring-i-teori-og-praksis). The project investigates how schools have implemented the cross-cutting team "Public Health and Life Mastery" in everyday school life and whether it is possible to define life mastery as a separate field of research. Johannessen is also a researcher and deputy leader of the NFR project "TranCit - Transloyalties in Citizenship Education" (https://www.vid.no/forskning/forskning-ved-vid/eksternt-finansierte-prosjekter/trancit), which examines how history education in secondary schools has promoted citizenship, both today and historically, in three African countries and in Norway.

Action research
Interreligious dialogue
Education and Development
KRLE
Intercultural Education
Intercultural Competence
Religious education