Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen

Ann Merrit Rikke Nielsen

Assistant Professor

My primary field of research is communication with specific emphasis on how trust and trustworthiness are achived, lost and negotiated locally in social interaction in organizations and bwtween professionals and lay persons. I am also very interested in people's interactional negotiation and construction of identity, knowledge, and power,  particularly in organizational contexts, and how this contributes to the co-creation of sense.

In my research, I primarily use microsociological methods based on ethnomethodology such as multimodal conversation analysis (CA), discoursive psychology,  and membership category analysis (MCA), as well as classic ethnographic methods.

Current research project
I am PI on the project Trust in (re)socializing interactions (#TIES), which, based on video ethnographic data, examines how trust as an interactional phenomenon is achieved, created, maintained or lost in interactions between employees/vulinteers and residents or users of (re)socializing institutions and organizations. In #TIES, researchers and  practitioners together identify interactional indicators of trust and distrust and based on these findings we co-create educational tools for the practitioners, allowing them to be even better equipped to conduct trusting conversations that involve and support vulnerable citizens to realize their own goals and participate in meaningful communities.
#TIES also contributes to basic research into trust as a practical interactional phenomenon by both 1) developing an empirically grounded theoretical conceptualization of trust as an interactional and social research object, and 2) investigating how the degree of trust and mistrust can be measured via observable interactional indicators in conversations between staff/volunteers and socially vulnerable citizens.
The project is funded by The VELUX Foundations
For more information see:
https://circd.ku.dk/research/projects/trust-in-resocializing-interactions-ties/

Teaching and supervision
I teach a wide range of communication subjects focussing on strategic communication, social interaction, communication theory and method as well as discourse, narrative, and identity theory. Currently I teach:

  • Methodology course for media and communication (spring)
  • Leadership, Communication and Organization Theory (spring)
  • Discourse analysis (autumn)

I supervise theses within a wide range of aspects of communication such as social interaction, strategic communication, branding, narrative approach, organizational culture and leader-ship, and various types of discourse analysis.

ID: 143262606