On this page, I list some of my research interests and projects. I have worked in a number of fields, but always with a core in life course sociology/family demography. I have done a lot of work on divorce, but also other aspects of fertility and family dynamics.

Over the years, my lack of self-discipline and troubling levels of curiousity have led me to dabble in social stratification, criminlogy, epidemiology, and more recently, also social science genetics. The common denominator of all this is using quantitative methods to understand social processes.

In criminology, I worked with Torbjørn Skardhamar and others to study the link between family formation and criminal careers. In epidemiology, I worked with Astri Syse and Øystein Kravdal with cancer and all-cause mortality. For some years, I did several projects on the causes and consequences of ethnic and socioeconomic segregation in Norway.

For almost twenty years, I have been interested in the role of genetics in explanation of individual outcomes. In 2018 I was lucky to get an ERC Consolidator grant to explore issues at the intersection of sociology, demography and genetics. That has been fun! Currently, I am completing that project, looking for new starts within the paradigm, and trying to tie together a lot of loose ends.

Beyond the statistical methods, another common denominator is the use of large-scale data. Much of my work uses Norwegian administrative register data. In Norway and the other Nordic countries, we have access to this amazing resources for research. Unfortunately, this resource comes with its own challenges for scientists. Transparency is less when data are so strongly protected as these data are. Replication is difficult, and data sharing illegal.

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