Jakob Sverre Løvstad
CTO, Seema
3 September 2025
Something that's been on my mind ever since I stuck my nose into the field of diversity is that it's very much characterised by individual stories and feelings about certain issues. In that sense, it's also a victim of something you see in many other social science organisations: It's terribly easy to confuse the subject itself with the people and stories that unfold in the subject. It's also far easier in the social sciences in general to forget that there is a lot of research that often goes against intuition than in, for example, quantum physics, where people don't really have a gut feeling about how the superposition of particles works. It also seems that most discussions are very far removed from the subject, and much more angled towards idealism, inflammatory individual cases and the like.
In short: It's crucial to distinguish between being part of a diversity, or having a history in which diversity plays a central role, and understanding the subject - which is in a meta-position.
Personally, as a nerd, my love for the subject lies primarily in the research and the many exciting approaches that make me constantly seek more knowledge. As we've pointed out many times, it's a major interdisciplinary project that sheds light on how to work scientifically with a wide range of complex issues. But it's perhaps a little easy to say that you need to know statistics, philosophy, sociology, management and so on. It can feel a bit like I'm just rattling off some abstract terms to seem a bit cool. That's why I thought I'd quickly give some examples of how the interdisciplinary approach is actually used in our day-to-day work - to concretise what it's all about.
We can take it as a small bulleted list, which is the world's best pedagogical move:
- Philosophy: As a discipline, philosophy is in practice a wide range of structured ideas about how to look at many aspects of life. In addition to attempting to be descriptive, it can also function normatively: Thoughts about how things should be thought about and acted upon. There is an awful lot of potential ethics in the field of diversity, which is all about who does what right and wrong in different situations. Despite newspaper headlines and endless social media posts, there really is no such thing as "right and wrong" in an objective sense, but by understanding ethics as a philosophical project and knowing about the different directions, you are at least able to talk rationally and structured about situations that arise. In addition, there is a lot of exciting philosophy about power relations, the structure of society, ways of looking at one's own life course and so on - all of which is relevant when working in the field on a daily basis.
- Research methodology and statistics: When we work, especially in organisations, it's incredibly important to establish what the situation is right where we are. Reading existing research and understanding it makes it possible to have a grounded perspective on the interpretations we make. For example, many power mechanisms can lead to so-called "learned helplessness", which is meaningless to talk about without knowing Seligman's research on the subject. However, since every organisation is also its own society, we need to make good hypotheses and perform reliable statistical analyses where we are. Once we have macro-analyses ready, it's natural to follow up with qualitative methods where you need to have a good grasp of narrative analysis, grounded theory, thematic analysis and so on - otherwise you end up with good old "subjective opinion based on interviews". The latter is not something you should pay for.
- Sociology: In our view, the most important aspect of sociology is the class perspective. In particular, how intersectionality and class are connected. Gaining access to power, privilege, position and so on is very much dependent on one's background and starting point, but is also influenced by certain types of diversity categories in particular. We see such class societies play out locally in every organisation, and require careful attention to the effects this has on employees.
- Social anthropology: It may be a little narrow to call this social anthropology, but it is essentially about an "inside-out" perspective. Most scientific disciplines look at phenomena from the outside, but anthropology has a so-called "inside-out" perspective. emic perspective: You try to describe what is happening socially and culturally from the inside. This is often done by the researcher participating in a society over time until they become part of it enough to understand the depth of norms, rituals, social dynamics and so on. But reading good autobiographical books written by those who have actually grown up with different types of diversity also has some of the same effect. Or if you watch documentaries where you have contemporary witnesses who mainly drive the narrative. The point is to get a truthful understanding of how something was experienced by those who were/are in the situation.
- History: It may be a bit obvious, but most of the issues we see in the field of diversity have a big backdrop. Without having some understanding of "where it all came from", it's hard to understand why things are so heated today. This also applies at an organisational level: There are plenty of things that have happened in any workplace that explain the dynamics and issues we're seeing right now. As one organisational consultant once jokingly said: "I realised something was wrong, but couldn't quite figure out what was going on. But it all made sense when I learnt that the CEO had slept with the CFO's wife at a Christmas party a couple of years ago." Not that it's always as piquant as that, but if you get people with experience to talk honestly, it quickly becomes obvious where the challenges come from and what the deep psychological backdrop is.
- Management: As a discipline, management is a fairly large umbrella, but to put it briefly, very few organisations actually have a real professionalisation of their leadership. Very often you have people who have been given managerial responsibility due to professional insight and experience, and who often handle the administrative side well enough. However, not many people have the opportunity to really practise key leadership skills. At the same time, it's absolutely necessary if you expect leadership where good decisions are made with integrity and direction, rather than just plodding along at the mindless pace of the system.
- Juice: There are a lot of legal considerations when it comes to diversity in Norway. Often when people make statements in the media and elsewhere, they forget that there is a lot to report on and many topics are regulated by law in this country. Having a basic grasp of what it takes to meet current requirements is simply something that all organisations must have in place. Regardless of your feelings and opinions on the matter.
- Psychology: Inevitably, there is a lot of psychology in the diversity field. The first really comprehensive book on prejudice was written by social psychologist Gordon Allport in 1954, but since then it has been recognised that our basic neuropsychology is very important because we (our brains) react to difference regardless of what we think about it. And how this happens is again (among other things) about both cognitive abilities and personality. Which in turn relies heavily on both genetics and developmental psychology. You should have read clam empirical psychology in order to be able to comment properly on the matter without falling into incorrect clichés. Not least, all behavioural changes are mainly based on applied social psychology with some reasonably hairy models at the bottom.
- Political science: As most people who have followed the subject over time have realised, diversity studies can quickly become political. Several parts of the subject have been used, often incorrectly, in heated political debates. And not least, the basis for politics is often driven by different groups with strong feelings about each other, within systems with varying degrees of democracy - i.e. diversity in both identity and perspectives, with defining frameworks around them. Understanding how these mechanisms work, and how the profession must always relate to the political backdrop, requires a fairly solid overview of what is happening both in society and at the organisational level (as well as interaction effects). Not least, all organisations are full of internal political processes in which you have to be on top of your game to influence the right places in order to push through measures that benefit the profession and the people it affects.
- Computer engineering/information science: As the list above might suggest, there is an awful lot of data to be handled here. Unless you're going to spend years and years (and unrealistic budgets) working with a single organisation, you need to be able to create good algorithms, understand performance optimisation, have an intimate relationship with appropriate programming languages for different tasks - and so on. These days, AI is also playing an increasing role in some of the analysis methods. But without automation, the field is completely impossible to work with within a reasonable timeframe. I remember with horror how slow things were when I was writing my own master's degrees. Something like that would have been unimaginably inefficient with our current workload.
I'm sure there's more I could have emphasised, but the above is the subject as it appears day to day in our work. And the ability to communicate this is important at all times. Being able to explain what we're doing, write tenders and all that, are support skills.
But when I think about what makes the profession interesting, it's reading textbooks every day, working with implementations and analyses, doing projects that push us to learn even more about all of the above and discussing exciting topics (from how the Fuciform Face Gyrus affects the perception of strangers' faces to how an algorithm can cut a couple of hours off our analysis time). This is what gives you "love for the game" - just as I used to watch countless amounts of footage of MMA matches and train 10-12 sessions every week to become a better athlete. You have to love the subject itself.
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