Professor Gunn Elisabeth Birkelund, PhD in Sociology is Professor of Sociology in the Department of Sociology and Human Geography at the University of Oslo (since 1999). Her main publications cover labour market studies, social stratification and inequalities related to gender and ethnicity. She has studied the integration of immigrants and children of immigrants in education and employment, social status and class, unemployment, health disparities and inequality in pair formation (spouses / partners).

She is presently the Principal investigator on Norwegian project on ethnic segregation and has recently finished a 4 year project on labor market discrimination (DISCRIM), using register data and randomized field-experiments. She is the Chair of the Executive Committee, Inter-University Centre, Dubrovnik; member of the International Editorial Board, Social Forces; Member of the Council, Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research; and Professor II at Institute for Analytical Sociology, Linköping University. She is a fellow of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters.