Research interests:
Halvorsen has done research within seven different areas:
• Ethics of the professions
• Philosophy of the social sciences
• Philosophy of law/legal theory
• Criminology
• Sociology of policing
• Philosophy of punishment and criminal law
• Political theory
Halvorsen is currently working on an internationally oriented research project, which aims to clarify possibilities and limits for lay participation within different social fields dominated by professions. The project seeks to combine normative theories of democracy with empirical research on the varieties of lay participation within institutions of conflict resolution, for example courts and conflict mediation boards.
Background:
Vidar Halvorsen (b. 1953) has a master`s degree in political science (cand.polit. 1987) from the University of Oslo and worked for several years as a senior planning officer in governmental bureaucracies, first in the Ministry of Justice and then at the Police Academy/Police University College. In 2002 he defended his dissertation Ethics, Force and Violence in Policing for the PhD degree and has since then worked at the Department of Criminology and Sociology of Law, first as Associate Professor and from 2013 as Professor of sociology of law.