CV - dr Gunnar Thorvaldsen

Norwegian Historical Data Centre
Faculty of Social Sciences
University of Tromsø
N 9037 Tromsø, Norway
E-mail: GunnarTh@sv.uit.no Tlf: +47 776 44179 Fax: +47 776 44182

Born Norway, May 26, 1948, two children.
Professor at the Norwegian Historical Data Centre, University of Tromsø.
Languages: Scandinavian, English, some German, a little French.
Undergraduate subjects: English, sociology, pedagogics.
Graduated in social history from the University of Oslo, 1978.
Sabbaticals at University of Minnesota 1996-97 and 2001-2.
Doctoral thesis: Migration in the province of Troms 1865-1900. (Dr. philos avhandling: Migrasjon i Troms i annen halvdel av 1800-tallet. En kvantitativ analyse av folketellingene 1865, 1875 og 1900). With summary in English, cf url http://www.rhd.uit.no/nhdc/summary.html.
The books Registrering og bruk av historiske persondata, Tano - Aschehoug 1996, and Databehandling for historikere, Tano - Aschehoug 1999.

Main research areas:

Norwegian and Swedish demography and social history, particularly migration and mortality.
Methodological work on record linkage and other computer-related methods.
Member of a researchers team on the mortality decline at the Centre for Advanced Study in the Norwegian Academy of Science during the academic year 1998/99.

Selected papers and articles:

"The Preservation of Computer Readable Records in the Nordic Countries". History & Computing 1992-3.
"The Encoding of Highly Structured Historical Sources". Computers and the Humanities, 28:1995.
"Longitudinal Sources and Longitudinal Methods - Studying Migration at the Stockholm Historical Database", in Brändström and Tedebrand (ed) Swedish Urban Demography, Umeå University, 1995.
"Record Linkage on the Micro Computer", in Josef Smets (red) Histoire et Informatique, Montpellier, 1992.
"Using the Statistical Package SAS to Study Migration at the Stockholm Historical Data Base". I: Borodkin & Vladimirov (red): Historia, statistika, informatika. Russiskspråklig konferanserapport, Universitetet i Barnaul 1995.
"Migration in the Province of Troms". I Structures and Contingencies in Computerized Historical Research, Konferanserapport, Universitetet i Nijmegen 1996.
"World Wide Web som allmenning". Nordisk arkivnytt, 1996.
“Økonomi eller sosialpsykologi. Teorier fra historisk migrasjonsforskning”. Tidsskrift for samfunnsvitenskap 1996-4.
“Om grenser og områder i lokalhistorisk forskning”. Festskrift til Sivert Langholm, Oslo 1997.
“Beyond Record Linkage: Longitudinal Analysis of Turn-of-the-century Interurban Swedish Migrants”. History and Computing 1997. (With Roger Miller)
“Historical Databases in Scandinavia”. The History of the Family. An International Quarterly, 1998/3
“Marriage and Names among Immigrants to Minnesota, Electronic Journal of the American Association for History and Computing http://mcel.pacificu.edu/history/JAHC/Thorvaldsen/ThorIndex.HTML
“Norway – The Norwegian Historical Data Centre”. In Hall, McCaa and Thorvaldsen (ed): Handbook of International Microdata for Population Research. Minneapolis 2000.
"Coastal Women and their Work Roles”. In Sandvik, Telste and Thorvaldsen (ed): Pathways of the Past. Essays in Honour of Sølvi Sogner. Oslo 2002.
“Infant mortality in 19th century Norway”. In Sogner, Sølvi et al (ed) Report from the Mortality Decline Project. Oslo 2002.

Positions of trust:

Board member, The Norwegian Historical Association
Board member, The International Association for History & Computing
Chairman of the board, The Norwegian Demographic Society