Line Nyhagen

Line is Reader in Sociology at the Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, United Kingdom. Her research is interdisciplinary and crosses subject areas within sociology and political science. She gained her PhD in Sociology from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA, in 1998.

Line’s main research interests are in the areas of religion, gender, feminism and women’s movements, migration and ethnic relations, citizenship and identities, and public policy. She is an expert in the sociology of gender and in the sociology of religion.

Line's latest book, 'Religion, Gender and Citizenship: Women of Faith, Gender Equality and Feminism' (with Beatrice Halsaa, published April 2016), has already been called a 'landmark contribution to scholarship'. The book explores views and experiences of Christian and Muslim women living in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom related to their faith, identities and citizenship. It also examines their views on gender equality, women's movements and feminism.

Line’s previous book, Majority-Minority Relations in Contemporary Women’s Movements: Strategic Sisterhood (with Beatrice Halsaa; Palgrave Macmillan 2012), has been reviewed in numerous journals, including The Sociological Review, NORA - Nordic Journal of Women’s Studies, the International Journal of Iberian Studies and more (for links to and excerpts from reviews, click here. The book compares and contrasts contemporary women’s movements in Norway, Spain and the United Kingdom, with particular attention to relations between ethnic majority and ethnic minority women and politics.

Both of Line’s most recent books have emerged from the research project Gendered citizenship in multicultural Europe: The impact of contemporary women’s movements (see www.femcit.org), funded by the European Commission. Line was Work Package Leader for the theme “Multicultural citizenship: Intersections between feminism, ethnic identity and religion”, and led an international, collaborative team of researchers. Her work within FEMCIT also included a study of how women’s movement activists understand citizenship (see Nyhagen Predelli, Halsaa and Thun 2012).

Line has initiated, worked on and led several research projects that have investigated the experiences of ethnic minorities, including Muslim women and men, ethnic minority women’s organizations, and immigrant organizations. In a project sponsored by the Research Council of Norway, she studied immigrant organizations in Norway with a view to their involvement in political decision-making processes. The project followed on from her previous research on the national political influence of ethnic minority women’s organizations, which was commissioned jointly by the Norwegian Research Programme on Power and Democracy and the Norwegian Ministry of Children and Family Affairs. In the field of migration and ethnic relations, she has also studied the views and practices of Muslim women and men in relation to gender, which involved in-depth interviews with Muslims in Norway of Pakistani and Moroccan backgrounds. She led the evaluation of the Contact Committee for Immigrants and the Authorities in Norway, commissioned by the Norwegian Ministry of Local Government and Regional Development. Line has also engaged in historical-sociological research on gender and religion, published in her book Issues of Gender, Race, and Class in the Norwegian Missionary Society in Nineteenth Century Norway and Madagascar (The Edwin Mellen Press, 2003) and in journal articles.