Who are the researchers in FamC?
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The FamC Study is situated at the Norwegian Institute of Public Health (NIPH). The research group currently consists of 4 tenure track researchers, 1 postdoc and 2 PhD fellows, and is led by Maren Sand Helland and Tonje Holt. FamC has extensive collaboration with both national and international research institutions and partners.
The researchers in FamC
Maren Sand Helland is a clinical psychologist and completed her doctoral degree on the topic of parental relationships in the spring of 2015 at the University of Oslo. Throughout her academic career, Maren’s research has centered around family dynamics.
Tonje Holt is a clinical psychologist and completed her doctoral degree on the treatment of children who have experienced traumatic events in 2014 at the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies. Tonje has a particular interest in children living in vulnerable situations, and she is principal investigator on a sub-project about residence arrangement and child mental wellbeing.
Linda Larsen has a background in psychology and cognitive science, and she obtained her doctoral degree on children’s early reading skills from Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia in 2014. She joined FamC in 2019 and is currently project lead on a sub-project examining inclusion and exclusion processes from health and welfare as a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic. Linda is particularly concerned with children's mental health and wellbeing.
Silje Baardstu is a senior researcher and has a background in developmental and personality psychology. She joined FamC in 2021 and is project lead on the sub-project "Gender Equality, Family Conflict and Children's Adjustment" commissioned by the Directorate for Children, Youth, and Family Affairs. She completed her doctoral degree in personality and developmental psychology at the University of Oslo in 2018. Silje has particular focus on child-environment interactions for children's social and emotional development and is also working as an Associate Professor at the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo.
Aurora Oftedal is a postdoctoral fellow on FamC. She has studied psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles and St. Andrews University and obtained her doctoral degree from OsloMet in 2023 on parents' stress reactions in connection with the detection of fetal abnormalities during pregnancy. Aurora’s research is particularly concerned with how socio-economic variables such as parents' work and finances relate to family functioning and child development.
Maria Morbech is a PhD student on the project. Her doctoral project is about residence arrangements for children when their parents live separately. In her master's thesis, Maria wrote about parental conflicts and used data from the FamC study.
Olav Tveit is a psychologist and PhD student on the project. His doctoral project is about children's agency and co-determination when parents separate and live apart, and generally about children's right to be heard in matters that concern them.
Espen Røysamb is a professor of psychology with high methodological expertise and broad experience in research into mental health, personality, and interpersonal relationships. He is employed both at NIPH and at the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo.
Kristin Gustavson is a psychologist and is professor of psychology at the Department of Psychology at the University of Oslo. She holds a part-time research position at NIPH. Kristin has high methodological expertise, and her research focuses on topics such as quality of life, mental health, and neurodevelopmental disorders in children.
Randi Sekkeseter is project coordinator and adviser on FamC. Among other things, she has responsibility for several administrative and coordinating tasks on the project, and she helps with data collections and has dialogue with the project participants as well as internal and external collaborators.
Trine Eikrem is a clinical psychologist and has a long history of working in the family counselling service. Part of her doctoral project involved performing in-depth interviews with a subset of parents and children from the families participating in FamC. Trine currently heads up a team of experts on high conflict among parents as part of the Directorate for children, youth, and family affairs’ national competence environment.
FamC collaborates with researchers both nationally and internationally. National partners include the University of Oslo, the Norwegian Centre for Violence and Traumatic Stress Studies, and The Regional Centre for Child and Adolescent Mental Health, Eastern and Southern Norway. International collaborators include experts within the field of family research and child and adolescent mental health and wellbeing from the US, the UK, Australia, Canada, Germany, and from the other Scandinavian countries.
Other supporters and collaborators
The family counselling service
Most of the participants in the project were recruited from the family counselling services, and the FamC group collaborated closely with leaders and employees at the family counselling offices throughout the participant recruitment period. The research group collaborates closely with the Norwegian Directorate for Children, Youth, and Family Affairs (Bufdir) and the family counselling services, including the service’s national resource and development teams (i.e., Family violence and high conflict and Children and youth in Family counselling services), to facilitate knowledge exchange, results dissemination, and linking research findings to the knowledge needs of the practice field. This collaboration is import and ensures up-to-date knowledge transfer to the services enabling the best possible help to families.
Reference group
FamC has a reference group consisting of researchers, professionals, and representatives from Bufdir, the family counselling services, and the Ombudsperson for children, all of whom have experience and expertise relevant for the project. The reference group has been active in its involvement throughout different phases of the project to ensure that the knowledge output is relevant and useful for the services and policymakers.
User involvement
User involvement from participants and the family counselling service in FamC has been a focus and is important for two primary reasons. To ensure that the project is relevant and meaningful to those it concerns and who will ultimately use its findings such as the services, policymakers, and users of the services. This has been achieved by listening to the experiences and perspectives of different families. User involvement also has the potential to improve the quality of the project and impact and recommendations from the project findings by gaining insights and involvement from the families involved.
