Contact:
- sunniva.whittaker@uia.no
- Phone
- +47 38 14 12 50
As Rector she chairs the University Board. She also represents the University with external partners in matters related to UiA and higher education in general. Further, she is consulted in a variety of contexts, by business and industry as well as public administration locally, regionally and nationally.
She was elected head of Universities Norway (UHR) for the periods 2021-2023 and 2023-2025 and thus has a central role in the university and university college sector.
Whittaker has a goal of creating a learning culture where students feel like partners in a knowledge community. She wants to have close cooperation with the students through working with student organisations, academic societies (linjeforeninger), and her own student mentors.
Securing good conditions for research, both for research groups and individual researchers, is also a highly prioritised task.
In keeping with UiA’s vision of co-creation of tomorrow’s knowledge, she emphasises further developing the cooperation with business and industry and public institutions in the region, not least to ensure that students forge links with relevant employers during their studies.
Part of this cooperation is the dissemination of the knowledge created with the rest of the community, including business and industry. She works to strengthen the position of knowledge in public discourse and in that way contribute to understanding and solving social issues.
She was born in Trondheim and grew up in Canada. Norwegian and English are her native languages. Her background is as professor with a doctorate degree in French linguistics from the University of Bergen, and she was formerly dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Education at UiA. She has been both Department Head and Vice Rector at NHH Norwegian School of Economics.
Her degree comprises French, Comparative Literature and Russian, and she is a qualified conference interpreter. Her doctoral thesis, which is written in French, explores how argumentation is integrated into linguistic structures.
At NHH Norwegian School of Economics, she took continuing education courses in macroeconomics, marketing, organisational psychology, management and organisational theory. Her background in the humanities has given her cultural competence and human understanding. Whittaker herself has benefited from the use of interdisciplinary approaches, both in management and academic roles, and she works to strengthen interdisciplinary collaboration at UiA.