Bjørn Hallstein Holte is Associate Professor of Social Sciences and Postdoctoral Fellow at VID Specialized University in Oslo, Norway. A social anthropologist by training, he conducts empirical research on the role of religion in the everyday lives of Roma migrants in Oslo in the PARI project. Holte hopes this research will provide insights into resources, relations, and networks that can generate positive change – as well as into what positive change may mean in this context.
Bjørn Hallstein Holte received his Ph.D. from VID in 2018. His Ph.D. thesis explored youth exclusion and religious organisations’ activities for youth in a diverse city district of Oslo. Since completing his Ph.D., Holte has mainly taught in social work programmes and continued to publish articles on inclusion/exclusion and religion in the welfare state. He has also published book chapters comparing his Norwegian research to Finnish and South African case studies in the Youth at the Margins (YOMA) research project. In addition to his research in Norway, Holte has long-standing interests in development studies and postcolonial theory that he will draw on to include further perspectives in PARI.
Representative publications
Holte, B. H. (2018). Counting and Meeting NEET Young People: Methodology, perspective, and meaning in research on marginalized youth. YOUNG, 26(1), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1177/1103308816677618
Holte, B. H. (2020). Religion and integration: Religious organisations’ communication in a diverse city district of Oslo, Norway. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 35(3), 449-468. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2020.1810973
Holte, B. H. (2021). Aalan’s story: Waithood, capital, and categories of youth research and policy in young people’s lives. Journal of Applied Youth Studies, 4(2), 185-20. https://doi.org/10.1007/s43151-021-00036-6
Holte, B. H., Leis-Peters, A., Angell, O.H., & Korslien, K.K. (2022). Us and them: Faith-based organisations and street youths in Søndre Nordstrand. In I. Swart, A. Vähäkangas, M. Rabe and A. Leis-Peters (Eds.) Stuck in the Margins? Young people and FBOs in South African and Nordic localities (pp. 121-142). Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht. https://doi.org/10.13109/9783666568558.121