Emily Oswald

• Oswald, Emily & Damsa, Crina I. (2025). Interdisciplinary Curricular Co-Design: An Interaction Analysis of Teacher-Researcher Collaboration. Proceedings (International Conference of the Learning Sciences). ISSN 1814-9316. p. 1997–2001. doi: 10.22318/icls2025.430707. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Drawing on a prominent theorization of collaboration, this paper analyzes interaction between a teacher and a researcher engaged in curricular co-design. The episode occurred during a process to develop a new interdisciplinary teaching sequence for secondary students on the sustainable use of electric vehicle batteries. The analysis illustrates the dynamics of collaboration in curricular co-design, highlighting joint work on the problem of what topics to teach. The participants’ work on this problem proceeded by co-elaborating candidate topics; evaluating the suitability of topics for the teaching at hand; and reformulating one topic in light of participants’ knowledge and expertise. This activity involved the teacher and researcher orienting to different knowledge resources, only some of which had been introduced in the task. This empirical illustration demonstrates how collaboration in the domain of curricular co-design may proceed, and contributes to a more nuanced understanding of how teachers and researchers learn in co-design processes.

• Rosenbaum, Leah; Morales-Navarro, Luis; Blikstein, Paulo; Oswald, Emily; Kafai, Yasmin B & Jiang, Shiyan [Show all 7 contributors for this article] (2024). Knowledge in New Pieces (KiNP): Exploring Diverse Areas of Contemporary Youths’ Intuitive Technosocial Knowledge. Proceedings (International Conference of the Learning Sciences). ISSN 1814-9316. doi: 10.22318/icls2024.577676. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Since Knowledge in Pieces, diSessa’s influential conceptual change framework, was introduced 35 years ago, the worlds that youth inhabit, navigate, and author have changed dramatically. New computing technologies have gained widespread use in daily personal, professional, and academic life. Social norms have broadened and shifted, making previously taboo topics a part of daily headlines and conversations. Advances in science have changed our understanding of global phenomena. Given the centrality of intuitive knowledge to the Knowledge in Piece framework, we propose that these changes to youth’s daily lives could result in similar changes to their thinking and reasoning that merit documentation. Moreover, should new intuitive knowledge pieces prove to be widespread, formal education and curricula could benefit from reflecting them. This symposium brings together researchers studying youth’s intuitive knowledge across a range of fields to share findings and organize toward a future research agenda.

• Stamatis, Kristina; Clarke, Sherice; Polman, Joseph; Gates, Zaynab; Lee, Ung-Sang & Van, Marcus [Show all 14 contributors for this article] (2023). Designing to Disrupt While Encountering Disruption: Engaging With the Unexpected in Educational Research and Practice. Proceedings (International Conference of the Learning Sciences). ISSN 1814-9316. doi: 10.22318/icls2023.101049. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This symposium brings together eleven projects across three continents to examine notions of disruption in educational research. Historically, notions of disruption have pointed to the ways research leverages innovation and transformative practice. However, amid global pandemic and intersecting unrest, the authors in this session recognize the need for deeper conversation across contexts to understand the ways that educational research in the learning sciences can leverage disruption toward transformational learning. To respond to this year’s call for building and sustaining knowledge in community, we seek to foster conversation about the ways that designed for and encountered disruptions act as opportunities for critical reflection and new kinds of engagement in educational research. Together, we examine various notions of disruption as they exist in our disparate work. We seek to provoke meaningful conversations about the ways educational research can embody the contemporary realities of learning with and toward disruption.

• Oswald, Emily Christine; Esborg, Line & Pierroux, Palmyre (2022). Memes, youth and memory institutions. Information, Communication & Society. ISSN 1369-118X. 26(15), p. 2999–3016. doi: 10.1080/1369118X.2022.2131363. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Through the collection of digital media and engagement with underrepresented groups, memory institutions aspire to preserve and interpret a range of contemporary perspectives on culture and identity. These institutions simultaneously seek to provide experiences that foster civic identities and cultural citizenship. This article explores the potential of collecting internet memes, a specific form of digital media, to further these institutional aims. Through an empirical study of a youth engagement program at a Norwegian folklore archive, we conclude that collecting and contextualizing image macros in collaboration with young people is an institutionally viable and inclusionary approach to documenting new expressions of culture and everyday life. The project further created a context in which young people could exercise competencies related to the development of a civic identity. These findings are relevant for cultural heritage institutions which aim to diversify the forms of digital media, knowledge practices and perspectives represented in their collections, and for cultural heritage professionals who aim to engage youth or marginalized communities. Extending recent research on internet memes as resources for meaning-making the study also underscores the value of participatory research methodologies which deliberately invite individuals’ interpretations of digital culture and analytical approaches that account for the richness of internet memes and image macros as semiotic resources for narrating identity.

• Oswald, Emily (2020). Remembering in Public: A Case Study of Museum-User Communication on Facebook. In Hetland, Per; Pierroux, Palmyre & Esborg, Line (Ed.), A History of Participation in Museums and Archives. Traversing Citizen Science and Citizen Humanities. Routledge. ISSN 9780367186715. p. 147–167. doi: 10.4324/9780429197536-12. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This chapter explores how social media is used to support the aspirations of museums to become more participatory institutions through an empirical study of communication between Facebook users and a municipal history museum. The study focuses on user responses to posts featuring historical photographs from the museum’s collections captioned with the question, “Do you see where this is?” Users’ comments on the museum’s posts suggest they understand the posts as a context for pursuing three communicative activities: identifying the location pictured; soliciting and sharing historical information about the location pictured; and reminiscing about the location pictured. In contrast to studies of museum–user communication, the analysis demonstrates that communicating with other users as well as the museum is an important aspect of all three activities. The chapter argues that supporting everyday engagement with museum collections through social media is a valuable form of participation for both individuals and institutions.

• Oswald, Emily Christine (2020). Getting to Know Other Ways of Knowing: Boundary Experiences in Citizen Science. Citizen Science: Theory and Practice. 5(1), p. 1–15. doi: 10.5334/cstp.310. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  This article uses the concept of boundaries (Akkerman and Bakker 2011) to explore why collaboration in citizen science is sometimes difficult. The case study focuses on collaboration between project organizers and project volunteers in a single citizen science project. The volunteers, from a regional botanical society, experienced boundaries between their group’s practices and the citizen science project organized by a natural history museum, despite similar ways of working. Organizers and volunteers responded to boundary experiences by defining their respective practices and suggesting how project activities could be coordinated across boundaries. Findings from this study support practitioners’ efforts to implement citizen science projects that result in positive outcomes for organizers and volunteers by revealing how participation in a community of practice, such as a botanical society, affects volunteers’ engagement in citizen science. Suggestions are made for how project designs can be responsive to volunteers’ boundary experiences.

• Oswald, Emily (2006). Imagining Race: Illustrating the Poems of Paul Laurence Dunbar. Book History. ISSN 1098-7371. 9, p. 213–233. Full text in Research Archive

View all works in NVA

• Oswald, Emily (2025). Samarbeid mellom forskere og lærere for å utvikle tverrfaglige undervisning. Full text in Research Archive
• Solbrekke, Tone Dyrdal; Sandvoll, Ragnhild; Ewins, Kristin & Oswald, Emily (2023). AHIE Forum Discussion Fall 2023. Full text in Research Archive
• Oswald, Emily; Esborg, Line & Pierroux, Palmyre (2023). Memes in memory institutions: Youth interests and literacies as encountered disruption in design-based cultural heritage work. Full text in Research Archive
• Oswald, Emily Christine & Pierroux, Palmyre (2020). Memes and Critical Thinking: From cultural heritage research to classroom learning. Full text in Research Archive
• Oswald, Emily Christine & Pierroux, Palmyre (2020). Democratization in Cultural Heritage Research. Full text in Research Archive
• Oswald, Emily Christine (2020). Reciprocity in Citizen Science? Getting to Know Other Ways of Knowing. Full text in Research Archive
• Oswald, Emily & Pierroux, Palmyre (2019). Constructing Reciprocity and Negotiating Collaboration in Citizen Science Projects. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Studies of participation in citizen science projects have shown the need to design tasks that provide meaningful connections to volunteers’ previous knowledge and interests to foster motivation and engagement. This challenge is explored in greater depth in a pilot study in which a natural history museum recruited members of a botanical society to contribute to an online citizen science project. The qualitative study followed the museum staff and botanists as they negotiated the terms for collaboration on this boundary object. Through analysis of in-person and online interactions, the study identifies specific challenges and opportunities for fostering reciprocity.

• Oswald, Emily Christine (2019). Cat Memes and the Kardashians: Can Internet Culture Support Authentic Disciplinary Learning? Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Should students’ knowledge of popular culture be incorporated into teaching and learning in the classroom? This lecture describes a project to collect internet memes for the Norwegian Folklore Archive, and the archive’s collaboration with Oslo high school students. It demonstrates how three aspects of authentic learning–authentic to self, authentic to others, and the use of authentic tools–helped to engage students in the discipline of cultural history, and outlines implications for using internet culture in formal educational settings.

• Oswald, Emily Christine (2019). When “Camilla” remembers on Facebook, do we need consent to study her comment? Ethical considerations for research about heritage on social media. Full text in Research Archive
• Oswald, Emily Christine (2018). ‘See where this is?’ A local history museum’s Facebook concept and the use of historical photographs for reminiscing on social media. Full text in Research Archive
• Oswald, Emily Christine (2017). Understanding Volunteers’ Interests in Virtual Citizen Science: Following a Collaboration between a Natural History Museum and a Local Botanical Organization. Full text in Research Archive
• Endresen, Dag Terje Filip; Oswald, Emily; Svindseth, Christian; Petter, Løfall Bjørn & Hetland, Per (2017). Citizen Science dugnadsportal for Telemark Botanisk Forening. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Large number of specimens in the Natural History Museums remain un-digitized and are not yet available in electronic form. The Volunteer Portal is a citizen science project where amateur naturalists are invited to contribute to the electronic registration of herbarium collections. Telemark Botanical Society will help us to test and explore the Volunteer Portal.

• Oswald, Emily; Svindseth, Christian; Løfall, Bjørn Petter; Endresen, Dag Terje Filip & Hetland, Per (2017). Citizen science dugnadsportal for Telemark Botanisk Forening. Full text in Research Archive
• Esborg, Line & Oswald, Emily (2017). New Voices in the Archive. Collaborating with Youth to Collect New Folklore Material. Full text in Research Archive
• Oswald, Emily Christine (2016). Informal Learning and Cultural Heritage: How (Young) People Access and Make Sense of Museum and Archival Collections. Full text in Research Archive
• Oswald, Emily (2021). Pa-KOW! Doing Participatory Knowledge Work in Museums and Archives. Universitetet i Oslo. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Museums and archives in the twenty-first century are memory institutions that interact with publics. These interactions often occur in the context of processes of participation in which staff at museums and archives communicate, collaborate or consult with individuals and groups from “outside” their institution. Participation is typically understood to be distinct from experiences of attending programs or exhibitions that do not involve opportunities for feedback or input, and is further assumed to reflect an institutional interest in the contributions and knowledge of publics. Some researchers and practitioners argue processes of participation can contribute to the democratization of memory institutions; others observe these processes reproduce the very power dynamics and negative outcomes participation aims to correct. This dissertation explores processes of participation in museums and archives through case studies of three institutions: the Museum of Oslo, the University of Oslo’s Natural History Museum, and the Norwegian Folklore Archives. Three overarching research questions are posed, inquiring into the role of technology in processes of participation; the exercise of agency by institutional and public participants; and the methodological strategies that account for current practice as well as innovation and change. In each case, the processes of participation involved different material from institutional collections, interaction with different publics, and different modalities for communication. In the first case, Facebook users viewed and commented on historical photographs from the Museum of Oslo’s collection, in response to a question posed by the museum: “Do you see where this is?” In the second case, members of a botanical society improved metadata about plant specimens preserved in the Natural History Museum’s herbarium through an online portal. In the third case, Oslo residents 16-19 years old contributed new material to the Norwegian Folklore Archive including internet memes to document the experiences and perspectives of the city’s young people. Methodologically, each case involved ethnographic observation of interaction between institutional and public participants as well as micro-level analysis of utterances. In the second and third cases, the process of participation was developed in collaboration with museum and archival staff through a research-practice partnership; interactions between institutional and public participants in that process were then analyzed. The first case was a retrospective study of the museum’s activity on social media. The first and second research questions are addressed by developing the concept of “participatory knowledge work” or Pa-KOW! to account for specific aspects of interaction in which publics meet memory institutions and memory institutions meet publics. These aspects include the exercise of agency by institutional participants in establishing communicative contexts for interaction; the importance of artefacts and of interaction among public participants in publics’ exercise of agency; and the ways in which digital media and infrastructures mediate knowledge practices and institutional collections. The third research question is addressed through the development of research-practice partnerships and formative interventions that involved close collaboration with museum and archival practitioners. The implications of Pa-KOW! for museum and archival practice and for research on memory institutions are discussed.

View all works in NVA