Rosemarie van den Breemer

Kort om

I am an associate professor in comparative politics at Inland Norway University of Applied Sciences, since August 2022 and a postdoctoral fellow at VID Specialized University, Oslo, as part of a project on Citizenship and Disability Studies, 2020-2023.

I hold a MA and M.Phil. from the New School for Social Research in New York and a PhD from the University of Oslo (2019). My research interests include state governance of religion as well as the state governance of disability, both seen from a comparative and historical perspective. Moreover, in my work I connecteveryday micropolitics with broader institutional regimes of structuration and I have a strong interest in methodological questions and approaches. 

I currently lead a postdoctoral project on ‘The Disability Family’ that charts families experiences with the care for children with multiple disabilities. The project analyses the construction of what I take to be a historically new form of disability governance – that is governance through the private disability family, rather than a central state institution. It thematizes families experiences with not being heard, or not being taken seriously, by service providers from within an analytic framework of epistemic injustice. I use a community based participatory research approach, involving co-researchers and a parent-organization in the process of investigation. 

In my most recent article I explore structural care relations between professionals and families with children with disabilities in light of a framework of epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007) and Foucault’s (1978) notion of counter-conduct:

Breemer, Rosemarie van den (2022) Epistemisk urettferdighet og motstand i livet til familier med barn med nedsatt funksjonsevne, i Wyller, T. & Lid, I. M (ed.) Makt, motmakt og praksis. Bidrag til kritisk refleksjon innen diakoni og velferd, Cappelen Damm Akademisk, Open Access.

My latest (2021) book Governing Cemeteries State Responses to the New Diversity in The Netherlands, Norway and France traces different state responses towards Muslim and humanist needs for special burial facilities in The Netherlands, Norway and France. The book shows how policy responses in these states follow distinctive types of logic between the various levels of governance. And it shows that for a proper conceptualization of these states’ religious governance regimes a focus on concrete material praxis has to be included. 

Teaching: Philosophy of Science and Method (Vitenskapsteori og Metode INT2005-1) Fall 2022 & Comparative Politics INT1017 Fall 2022

Reviewer for: Critical Research on Religion & Scandinavian Journal of Disability