Katherine Brown
PhD candidate, University of Agder
Katherine Brown is a PhD research fellow in the department of Information Systems at the University of Agder. With a background in cultural anthropology (BA from Macalester College) and Applied Cultural Analysis (MA from University of Copenhagen), she is interested in immigrants’ and other minority groups’ experiences. Her research focuses on understanding immigrants’ shared experiences of moving to Norway’s digitalized welfare state and how the process of digital integration interacts with other social, economic, and cultural changes that occur during the immigration period. She uses a variety of qualitative methods to understand how systemic factors interact with individual characteristics to produce digital divides.
Tell us about your project!
As Norway digitalizes its public services, the risks associated with residents being unable or unwilling to use digital tools increases. This project, part of “Infrastructures for partially digital citizens: supporting informal welfare work in the digitized state”, qualitatively explores how immigrants experience the process of moving to a country that has made digital interaction with its public sector semi-mandatory. It explores how public sector digitalization can increase digital divides for a diverse group that is digitally competent and regularly uses technology. Additionally, it maps how immigrants access services with the help of family, friends, employers, or other organizations during the transition period when they may not yet have digital access. The project takes a process view of immigrants’ moves, aiming to identify where digitalization causes the most challenges for immigrants, how these challenges are overcome, and what might smooth the immigration process.
“ The project takes a process view of immigrants’ moves, aiming to identify where digitalization causes the most challenges for immigrants, how these challenges are overcome, and what might smooth the immigration process.”
— Katherine Brown on her research project “Pathways to Digital Citizenship: Immigrants’ Processes of Digital Integration with the Norwegian Public Sector”