Kjetil Wathne

Kjetil Wathne serves as Associate Professor in the Department of Social Work, Child Welfare and Social Policy at Oslo Metropolitan University's Faculty of Social Sciences. His position combines medical anthropology with critical welfare studies, focusing on institutional power dynamics within Norway's social services system.

His research centers on minority health disparities, particularly examining childhood obesity among Pakistani immigrant youth, welfare encounters of immigrant women in workfare programs, and foster placement dynamics for African minority children. He investigates how cultural perceptions shape health experiences and institutional responses, emphasizing negotiation processes in pain assessment, child protection, and obesity management within multicultural contexts.

Analysis of Wathne's 2011-2024 publications reveals consistent thematic evolution from somatic experiences of obesity toward systemic critiques of welfare administration. His work demonstrates increasing focus on institutional trust deficits among minority populations, cultural conceptualizations in child placement, and administrative tensions between state and municipal welfare bodies. This trajectory shows deepening engagement with power structures in welfare delivery while maintaining medical anthropology's micro-level perspective on embodied experiences.

Wathne actively contributes to the Globalisation and social sustainability Transform research group, where he examines how globalization processes impact welfare sustainability and minority inclusion within Scandinavian social models through collaborative, interdisciplinary projects.