Grete Swensen is an ethnologist and senior researcher, and has worked at NIKU since 2000. Her field of interest is the study of the relationship between people and the environment.

Many of her studies have a social history profile, whether studies rooted in issues related to the processes of change in the urban landscape, the built environment in rural areas or in cities. Cultural historic knowledge is used to shed light on the processes of change that take place in contemporary society. Recently, much of her research has been focused on how cultural heritage can be included as components of the current physical planning, including integration of cultural heritage in a vibrant urban development.

She has been project manager for several research projects funded by the Norwegian Research Council as well as research coordinator in three strategic institute programs in NIKU. She has also taken part in the methodological development of vulnerability analysis in the built environment. She emphasizes the need for multidisciplinary research and the use of qualitative methods.

She has previously worked at the University of Oslo, in the museum sector (Industrial Workers Museum in Rjukan, the county museum in Akershus) and has also been head of research in the Norwegian Research Council’s Research Programme on Cultural Heritage (FOK program, 1989-1993).

Grete Swensen has a doctorate in ethnology and defended it in 1996 with the thesis ‘Modern but obsolete? The non-governmental organisations’ building activities in formative perspective 1870-1940′.