Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen

Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Nordic Studies and Linguistics at the University of Copenhagen. Her research focuses on communication with specific emphasis on how trust and trustworthiness are achieved, lost, and negotiated locally in social interaction within organizations and between professionals and lay persons. She also investigates people's interactional negotiation and construction of identity, knowledge, and power in organizational contexts, and how this contributes to the co-creation of meaning.

Dr. Nielsen holds a Master of Arts in Danish & History, awarded on August 1, 2016. Her educational background provides a strong foundation for her interdisciplinary approach to communication studies, bridging humanities and social science perspectives.

Her primary research interests center on trust as an interactional phenomenon, particularly in resocializing contexts. Using microsociological methods based on ethnomethodology—including multimodal conversation analysis, discursive psychology, and membership category analysis—she examines how trust is practically achieved in everyday interactions. Her work has significant implications for social work practice, organizational communication, and community building. She is particularly interested in how vulnerable citizens navigate interactions that affect their social reintegration and participation in meaningful communities.

Dr. Nielsen's recent publications demonstrate a strong focus on trust dynamics in forensic and social work settings, with particular attention to how trust is negotiated in interactions involving former inmates and other vulnerable populations. Her research combines theoretical innovation with practical applications, developing interactional indicators of trust that can inform educational tools for practitioners. She has also recently expanded her work to examine technology use among blind individuals, showing the breadth of her interest in communication contexts.

• PI on VELUX Foundation-funded project "Trust in (re)socializing interactions (#TIES)"
• Active contributor to International Institute for Ethnomethodology and Conversation Analysis (IIEMCA)
• Co-organizer of academic panels on risk, vulnerability and uncertainty

Dr. Nielsen teaches a wide range of communication subjects including Methodology course for media and communication, Leadership Communication and Organization Theory, and Discourse analysis. She supervises theses on diverse topics within communication studies including social interaction, strategic communication, branding, narrative approaches, organizational culture, leadership, and various types of discourse analysis.