Academic Interests
May-Len Skilbrei's research interests are mobility, gender and sexuality.
She has done empirical studies on subjectivities in, and policy developments on prostitution and human trafficking, sexual violence, marriage, labour, irregular migration and return migration.
Skilbrei is an experienced ethnographer, as well as in combining qualitative and quantitative methodologies. She has conducted empirical research in Norway, Sweden, Estonia and Russia.
Skilbrei is currently the project manager of the project Medical, legal and lay understandings of physical evidence in rape cases (Evidently Rape) funded by UiO:Life Science in the period 2019-2023.
Skilbrei co-edits the Routledge book series Interdisciplinary Studies in Sex for Sale. In the period 2014-2021 she was a member of the National Committee for Research Ethics in the Social Sciences and the Humanities (NESH) and is in the years 2020-2024 serving as the Head of the Board of the Centre for Gender Research at the University of Oslo. Skilbrei was the vice-chair of the COST Action Comparing European Prostitution Policies: Understanding Scales and Cultures of Governance (2013- 2017), and in 2009-2013 a member of the management committee of Eastbordnet.
Teaching
Skilbrei teaches
- criminological theory
- qualitative methods
- gender, sexuality and violence.
She supervises MA and PhD students working on commercial sex, human trafficking, migration, rape, prisons, gender identity, sexuality norms and gender and violence.
Higher education and employment history
May-Len Skilbrei is Professor at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law. Before taking up a position at the University of Oslo, Skilbrei was a researcher at and, for three years, a managing director of, Fafo Institute for Applied International Studies. Previously, Skilbrei had been a PhD scholar and researcher at NOVA - Norwegian Social Research, and a Post Doc. Fellow at the University of Oslo. Skilbrei’s education is in criminology, law and sociology, with a PhD from the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo from 2003.