Background
Kristian Andenæs graduated in 1974 from the Faculty of Law, the University of Oslo. In 1993 he received his Dr. philos. degree on a dissertation entitled “Social welfare - for better, for worse” (Norwegian title “Sosialomsorg i onde og gode dager”, TANO 1992). After graduating from the Faculty of Law, Andenæs worked as a research officer at the Ministry of Social Affairs and as an assistant district judge at Lyngen District Court, prior to accepting a position as assistant professor at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Tromsø. From 1984 until present day he has been at the Departement of Criminology and Sociology of Law. Andenæs was appointed professor of sociology of law in 1997. Andenæs has also been Director of Juss Buss Law Clinic since 1990.
Special fields
Sociology of law, Legal aid, Legal policies, The legal profession, Courts of law, Social welfare policies and social assistance legislation, Juridification, Discrimination against minorities.
Andenæs is responsible for the sociology of law programme, and has also been responsible for immigration law at the law faculty. He tutors master- and ph.d.- students in sociology of law, welfare law and immigration law.
Andenæs is supervising a research project on juridification and legal governance, financed by The Research Council of Norway - which has various sub-projects conducting research on topics such as social welfare policies (Knut Papendorf), cultures of control (Lill Scherdin), non governmental legal aid (Camilla Lied) and ”billighetserstatninger” – wrongs committed by the state and financial remuneration (Karen-Sofie Pettersen).
He is also participating in a research group working on legal cultures, together with, members from Chr. Michelsen Institute (Åse Grødeland), Oxford University/Centre for Socio-Legal Studies (Marina Kurchiyan) and Glasgow University (William Miller).