Alexa Døving

Center for Studies of Holocaust and Religious Minorities · Research

During the first few weeks after the terrorist attacks, a surprising number of citizens acted and spoke on behalf of the nation, doing so through ritual performances of grief and politics. Specific places were turned into temporary memorials consisting of flowers, candles, card and letters. This study has analyzed these memorials, focusing on the w...

I juni 2015 ble den svarte aktivisten Rachel Dolezal «avslørt» som hvit. Saken skapte enorm medieinteresse, og begrepet rase, som ellers er en tatt-for-gitthet i USA, ble omfattende diskutert i presse, talkshow, blogginnlegg, artikler og analyser. Dolezals raseoverskridelse ble generelt strengt fordømt, og forestillingen om det moderne Amerikas aks...

This article explores contemporary images of Jews and Muslims in Norway by using qualitative empirical data, namely the answers to an open-ended question that was included in a quantitative survey on attitudes towards Jews and other minorities in Norway, conducted in 2012. The target group for the survey consisted of Norwegian residents aged 18 and...

This article provides an analysis of how Jewish rituals and Jews as a minority group are represented and debated in the Norwegian press: How is “news about the Jews” framed by the media? Which discourses dominate the debates? Are notions of what it “takes to be Norwegian” put forward in these cases? The article is also an analysis of Jewish voices...

“What do you think might be the reasons for existing negative attitudes toward Muslims?” This was one of the open-ended questions asked in a broad quantitative survey on attitudes toward minorities in Norway. The responses make up the theme of this article. Through a qualitative analysis of the respondents' own assessments of the reasons for negati...

Norwegian society is markedly secular, and religious leaders generally have no power beyond their own religious community. Public debate is nevertheless distinguished by a commonly held belief that religious leaders are powerful individuals. This is particularly the case with imams, who are accused of having too much power and of using this power t...

Conducted in 2010, the study examines possible connections between religious commitment and social integration in Norwegian society among first and 'second generation' Muslim immigrants living in the Oslo area, with a family background from Pakistan. The pilot study is based on qualitative interviews with nineteen informants, selected from differen...

Do religious debaters challenge the secular public sphere? This article is an analysis of the largest religion related debate in Norway: the debate about the hijab and the use of religious symbols in the public sphere. The article is empirically founded on the debates in 2009 that began with the question about to which degree the hijab could become...

Do similarities exist among stereotypical portrayals of minority groups, regardless of social and historical context? Can some of the linguistic mechanisms that underlay the stereotypical portrayals of ‘the collective Jew’ at the beginning of the 20th century be found in the stereotyping of ‘the Muslim’ at the beginning of 21st? Is it at all releva...