Shifting Grounds

Research group Shifting Grounds brings Nordic/international scholars of norm criticality together to advance the theoretical framework and concepts for thinking and practising norm criticality in academic work across disciplines. Our common aim and interest is to, through theoretical inquiry, provide a new language and ground for addressing social injustices.

The Upcoming Seminar

No online research seminars during this fall

This fall, the Shifting Grounds organising committee will concentrate their work on fundraising for a Norm Critical Reader. This means that there will be no online research seminars during the autumn term, but we welcome members of the network to initiate seminars themselves. The Shifting Grounds Research Network will be happy to host and announce the seminar. So, should you have an idea and the resources to organise an online seminar, please feel free to contact Lotta Björkman (our network contact person).

Network contact person

Södertörn University

Lotta Björkman PhD, Södertörn University

Organising committée

Members

Shifting Grounds welcomes scholars with an interest in norm criticality to participate in the network’s online research seminar.

Dates can be found below. Please click on the respective seminars to get more information. There you will also find a registration link that will open two weeks prior to the seminar. A zoom link will be sent to registered participants no later than the day before the seminar.

Please note that participants are respectfully required to introduce themselves at the onset of the seminar using both camera and audio. Participants who choose not to do so will be removed from the seminar.

If you are interested in presenting a paper, please contact lotta.bjorkman@sh.se

Previous seminars within Shifting Grounds

Click here.

Other network activities

Lotta Björkman, Södertörn University,
will defend her doctoral dissertation, 10 October 2025

Lotta Björkman, Södertörn University, will defend her doctoral dissertation:
The Didactic Dimensions of Inclusion – A Phenomenological Study of Teachers’ Teaching from the Perspective of Upper Secondary School Students

Friday, 10 October 2025, at 13:00 – 15:00
Opponent: Tone Sævi, Professor, NLA University College, Norway
Language: Swedish

Shifting grounds host the panel Norm critique –
New air for a stagnated concept at
the g25 conference in Staare/Östersund, October 21-23 2025

Over the past decade, norm critique (and its numerous alterations such as norm creativity, norm consciousness, normativity sensitivity etc.) has developed into a tool that is supposed to challenge injustice, unequal rights and discrimination. It has been taken up as a mode of governance within several Swedish institutions and appears in a variety of guidelines and manuals, conferences, educational events and policy documents. This popularization has been problematized by critical scholars as well as public debaters. Some argue that the popularization of norm critique might be due to the liberal discourse within which the concept has been adopted - making it at times more a question of having access to the right vocabulary and ticking the right boxes than about challenging unequal structures and redistributing symbolic and material privilege. Others suggest the popularization of norm critique to be symptomatic of contemporary forms of power, through which individual subjects discipline themselves in the name of emancipation. Political opponents argue that the spread of norm critique is a symptom of radical identity politics and, thus, constitute a hazard society as we know it.

Taking point of departure in these tensions, this panel will bring together researchers from different national and disciplinary backgrounds with a hope and interest in both exploring, confronting and theoretically advancing norm critique and the ‘change’ it is expected to generate.

Panel conveners are Marta Padovan-Ödzemir and Lovise Brade and presenters will be Marta Padovan-Ödzemir, Josefin Olsson, Katrine Scott and Tobias K. Axelsson. Please join us if you are at the conference!

www.miun.se/g25

New PhD-Course on Norm Critical Research,
Roskilde University, Nov 10-12, 2025

The course is aimed at PhD students with an interest in norm critique, norm-critical interventions, and the significance of norms for (in)equality, (in)justice as well as inclusion and exclusion in various societal contexts such as educational practice, urban planning, sustainable transition, innovation, working life, and management. The PhD course taps into current theoretical, methodological, and analytical discussions of how norm critique can offer new ways of studying inequality and how norm critical research practices can revitalize a feminist and anti-racist ethical imperative of social change and refurbish the social obligation of research.

Lecturers: Marta Padovan-Özdemir, Jo Krøjer, Sine Nørholm Just, Camilla Andersson & Lovise Haj Brade

Josefin Olsson, Umeå University,
will defend her doctoral dissertation, 5 December 2025

Josefin Olsson, Umeå Centre for Gender Studies, will defend her doctoral dissertation entitled: Normkritiska Begär – Den feministiska kritikens gränser och möjligheter (English title: Norm Critical Desire – On the Limits and Possibilities of Feminist Critique).

Friday, 5 December 2025, at 10:00 – 12:00
Opponent: Associate Professor Elisabet Langmann, Education, Södertörn University

Latest update: 2026-09-02