Karin Marie Antonsen

• Indigenous peoples and Arctic communities

• Industrial development and food systems

• Outsideness and inclusion

Researcher with expertise in place identity, sustainable tourism development and inclusive societies

Karin Marie Antonsen is a senior researcher and research leader at Nordland Research Institute . She has extensive experience in research on place identity, place-making, rurality, schooling and sustainable tourism development. Her work spans inclusive tourism, visitor management, community planning and secondary education. Karin has a strong commitment to developing knowledge in close collaboration with actors in the public sector, business and civil society.

Competence

Karin has a background in human geography and has developed considerable expertise in sustainability and local development throughout her career. She has worked extensively on issues related to nature-based tourism, inclusion, visitor management and the use of the UN Sustainable Development Goals as a tool in regional and municipal planning.

She has led and participated in a large number of research projects and evaluation assignments. In addition, she has experience from teaching and co-creation processes, and uses both qualitative and quantitative methods in her work. Karin combines a research-based approach with practical societal benefit and has a clear communication profile.

Education and work experience

Karin has a PhD in human geography from NTNU (2011), a master's degree in human geography (2001), a cand.mag. in social sciences and practical pedagogical education from the University of Nordland (2014). She has been employed at Nordland Research Institute since 2014 and has been a research leader since 2023. Previously, she has worked as a teacher and project coordinator in upper secondary school, regional manager in Young Entrepreneurship and has been a research fellow and university lecturer at NTNU. 

Research and knowledge production 

Karin has led a number of research projects, including:

• Gaia Vesterålen (2021-2025)

• ACCESSTOUR – Accessible Tourism for inclusion and value creation (2021–2025)

• Capacity building for sustainable visitor management in Vesterålen (2024–2025)

• ClimTour - Impacts of climate change on Norwegian nature-based tourism (2018-2022)

• Sustainable destination development in Lofoten (2018–2020)

• Evaluation of the School-Worklife Cooperation Project and the Vocational Training Project in Nordland (2018) and Evaluation of Collaboration for Increased Implementation in Troms (2019). 

She has published a large number of reports and scientific articles, including in Climate Services , Weather, Climate and Society and BMC Public Health . The topics range from tourism, inclusion and sustainability, to educational models and measures against high school dropout. 

Dissemination and lectures

Karin is an active communicator and has given a number of lectures at national and international conferences, including:

• Research in the Outdoors (2024)

• National Conference of County Councils for People with Disabilities (2023)

• Inclusive Nordic Travel (2022)

• Norwegian Experience Conference (2022)

She has also given presentations to educational stakeholders, county municipalities and students at various educational institutions. She is committed to making research relevant and accessible, and building bridges between academia and practice.

PhD thesis "From policy to practice; Implementation of changes in law to support and protect children of ill parents" at the Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Tromsø, The Arctic University of Norway.

• Young inclusion Nordland: Focus on apprentices and trainee candidates

• Capacity building for sustainable visitor management in Vesterålen

• Follow-up service in Oslo

• The ladder model

• Film destination Northern Norway

• Gaia Vesterålen

• FULVIS - Research-based development and learning in upper secondary school

• ACCESS TOUR

• Clima Tour

• The county municipality as planning supervisor

• Follow-up evaluation of the project Local environment and local communities that promote public health 2016-2018

• Tourist fishing Lofoten

• Complete - Good psychosocial learning environments improve completion in upper secondary school

• Dropout rates in upper secondary schools in Lofoten: Study on dropout rates in upper secondary schools in Lofoten

• New strategy for the tourism/adventure industry in Nordland

• Experience-based value creation through competence development in the North

• VRI Experience-based tourism

• Model for financing common goods for experience-based tourism

• E-learning

Here you can read my publications in NVA.