Rebecca Bruu Carver
Senior Communications Adviser
Responsibilities
I work broadly with both science communication, participant engagement with research and internal communication at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health. I am also an experienced qualitative and quantitative researcher having conducted many public surveys and interviews. I am currently working 50% with ethical, legal and societal aspects (ELSI) in the largescale EU project Joint Action PreventNCDs (2024-2025) where I am investigating people's perceptions on the use of risk information for preventing cancer and other non-communicable diseases including mental health conditions.
During the last five years I have worked in several large research projects, both with communication and research tasks, within the topics of public understanding of brain health (the LIFEBRAIN project at the Department of Psychology, UiO, 2019-22), the ethical and societal aspects of biobank research (Biobank Norge 3, 2023) and patient perspectives on participation in clinical trials (DECODE 2023-2024, EraPerMED). In 2025 I completed a pilot project on citizen engagement in the Norwegian Mother, Father and Child cohort study (MoBa), where we engaged young MoBa-ambassadors to investigate young people's interest in and motivations for participating in longitudinal cohort studies. I therefore have a wealth of interdisciplinary expertise that I can quickly transfer to new projects.
My background: I have an MSc in Science Communication from Imperial College London. March 2013 I completed a PhD about media framing and genetics from the University of Oslo, entitled Framing the Gene - A science communication study of how newspapers frame different meanings of the gene concept, with applications for science education. My interests and competencies lie within the areas: Science Communication, Health Communication, Brain health, Music and health, Science education, Scientific literacy, Genetics and genomics, Biobank research, Public engagement with science, Patient and public Involvement in research, Media studies and Public understanding of science, public surveys, scientific and popular science writing. During 2014-2015 I was a postdoc at the University of Bahia, Brazil, conducing research in the public understanding and attitudes towards modern genetics and genomics. I have for ten years been a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Science Communication.