Line Nyhagen

Line's research centres on two areas of investigation: Religion and Gender; and Social Justice. Within the area of Religion and Gender, my research focuses on women and men, femininities and masculinities, and intersections between gender, religion, race and ethnicity. It examines religion as identity, belief and practice, and interrogates the relationship between religion as empowerment versus oppression. Her work mainly focuses on Christianity and Islam, but she also examine intersections between the religious and the secular, and discursive representations of religious and secular women as ‘the Other’.

Within the area of Social Justice, her research focuses on how gender and other interlocking structures and identities (e.g., religion, race, ethnicity, class, and sexuality) produce patterns of exclusion, and experiences of marginalisation and discrimination. She investigates citizenship as identity, participation and belonging in everyday life, and patterns of exclusion and inclusion related to lived citizenship in contexts such as migration, feminism and women’s movements. Line also researches religion, race and ethnic relations in higher education, in women’s organisations, and in the interplay between NGOs (e.g., migrant organisations) and the government.

Line have made significant contributions to the University’s emerging priorities in EDI, involving the University’s Athena SWAN Committee, the Equality and Diversity Working Group, the Equal Opportunities Task and Finish Group, and the International Women’s Week. She was the Lead for her School’s successful Athena Bronze award application (awarded to SSH in spring 2019), and she is the founder of the Barbara Bagilhole Memorial Student Paper Prize in SSH, celebrating UG students’ engagement with EDI. She also led the university funded research project ‘Experiences in the classroom and beyond: the role of race and ethnicity’; the resulting report led to new University policies such as the introduction of anonymous marking. 

• Nyhagen, L (2020). ‘It’s not macho, is it?’ Contemporary British Christian Men’s Constructions of Masculinity’. The Journal of Men’s Studies. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1060826520981719
• Nyhagen, L. (2019). ‘Mosques as Gendered Spaces: The Complexity of Women’s Compliance With, and Resistance To, Dominant Gender Norms, and the Importance of Male Allies’. Religions 10, 321: 1-15 (Special issue on Leadership, Authority and Representation in British Muslim Communities)
• Nyhagen L. (2019). Contestations of Feminism, Secularism and Religion in the West: The Discursive Othering of Religious and Secular Women. Nordic Journal of Religion and Society 32 (1): 4-21.
• Dhillon, C., Ebende, J. K., Esson, J., Nyhagen, L. and Sherred, A. (2018). ‘Experiences in the Classroom and Beyond: The Role of Race and Ethnicity’. Research report, School of Social Sciences, Loughborough University. Available at: https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/Experiences_in_the_classroom_and_beyond_the_role_of_race_and_ethnicity/9471068
• Nyhagen, L. (2018). ‘Citizenship, Religion, Gender and the Politics of Belonging. A Case Study of White, Middle-Class Christian Men in the East Midlands, United Kingdom’. Culture and Religion 19 (3): 253-272.
• Nyhagen, L., & Halsaa, B, (2016 hardback; 2019 paperback). Religion, Gender and Citizenship: Women of Faith, Gender Equality and Feminism. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
• Nyhagen Predelli, L. & Halsaa, B. (2012). Majority-Minority Relations in Contemporary Women’s Movements: Strategic Sisterhood. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan