Ståle Knudsen

My research trajectory has taken me from Turkish fisheries, through management of European seas, to environmental conflict in Turkey and most recently to Norwegian corporations’ engagement with corporate social responsibility when they work abroad. Recent and planned research focuses on the role of transnational energy corporations and explores tensions between responsibility and financial logics as this is negotiated at the interface between corporations, states, international institutions, civil society, and local communities. Current research interests relate in particular to corporations and their engagement with the sustainable development goals and environmental and social governance.

While my recent work has concentrated on Norwegian corporations, previous work since the early 1990s has been based on long-term fieldwork (more than two years) among fishers, managers, and scientists in Turkey. Situated broadly within environmental anthropology and political ecology, this research covered issues such as knowledge, technology, science, seafood and consumption, introduced species, state policies, poverty, common pool resources, environmentalism, and corporate social responsibility. Running through all this work is the vexing issue of identities.

Between 2004 and 2013 I was involved in interdisciplinary EU-funded work related to the management of European seas, and from 2015-2019 headed the project Energethics that explored how Norwegian energy corporations handle corporate social responsibility when they operate abroad. My publications include the monography Fisheries in Moderinizing Turkey (Berghahn 2009) and around 30 articles, of which I am sole or lead author of most, and most of which have appeared in peer-reviewed international journals. I was head of the Department of Social Anthropology at UiB from 2014 until 2021.