Publikationer av forskare affilierade till CRS

This chapter explores the evaluation of interdisciplinary PhD dissertations in the humanities and social sciences. Despite growing interest in interdisciplinary research, there is no consensus on how to assess it, making evaluation complex. The study analyzes 22 Norwegian and four Swedish evaluation reports, along with interviews with supervisors, to identify key criteria and challenges.Successful interdisciplinary dissertations are characterized by methodological transparency and the ability to synthesize and critically reflect on how to integrate diverse theoretical perspectives. The challenges concern insufficient reflection on the researcher’s position, unclear distinctions between normative and empirical approaches, and the contribution of the thesis to particular research disciplines.The chapter concludes that assessing interdisciplinary research requires specific competencies, including openness to diverse epistemologies and the ability to evaluate hybrid methodologies. It emphasizes the need for training environments that foster interdisciplinary dialogue—not only for PhD candidates but also for supervisors and evaluators. Ultimately, the quality criteria for interdisciplinary dissertations—clarity, coherence, transparency, and argumentative strength—are similar to those for monodisciplinary work, but often more demanding to fulfill.

In this concluding chapter, the editors revisit the volume’s point of departure from the existing research and summarize the main contribution to the emerging discussion on interdisciplinary supervision.

Hur förstår vi vad en helig plats är idag? Vid besök i kyrkor i andra länder möts besökaren inte sällan av en skylt som i piktogram räknar upp en rad saker som är förbjudna i detta rum – korta byxor, glass, mobiltelefoner, kyssar, hattar, tuggummin, prat, eller annat – och som förklaring till förbuden anges att “detta är en helig plats”, eller “detta är en kyrka”. Vi lever i en värld idag där människor från olika kulturella och religiösa bakgrunder flyttar, semestrar, studerar, eller av andra skäl rör sig över världen och tillsammans utgör en högst blandad skara besökare i bland annat kyrkor. Till detta kommer den ofta påtalade, men inte oomtvistade, sekulariseringen som tillsammans med andra historiska faktorer har bidragit till att flytta in religionen i museimontern. Denna essä vreflekterar kring relationen mellan religion och kulturarv, kring religion som kulturarv, och kring hur kyrkorna kommunicerar vad ett heligt rum är och vad en kyrka är inför en mångfacetterad skara besökare. Det är inte självklart att alla besökare idag automatiskt förstår vad ett heligt rum är genom att uppförandekoder och förbud räknas upp. Frågan infinner sig om vår tid möjligen behöver ett nytt språk och nya berättelser för att göra det heliga rummet begripligt.

This book explores how trends of increasing emphasis on interdisciplinarity and internationalization on the one hand, and efficiency and professionalization on the other, affect doctoral supervision. Based on experiences from a Scandinavian interdisciplinary research school, the volume explores supervision as a distributed practice in a particular context.The volume discusses existing research on interdisciplinary doctoral education and supervision, as well as how handbooks on supervision discuss the impact of conducting interdisciplinary projects. It highlights how PhD students and supervisors experience their roles in the supervision of interdisciplinary projects and analyzes how committees evaluate interdisciplinary dissertations. Additionally, it explores processes of learning interdisciplinary research practices between Scandinavian and North American contexts.The volume broadens the field by adding new empirical and theoretical insights on how larger transformations of the context of PhD education in late modern knowledge societies shape interdisciplinary supervision practices. The chapters confirm insights from previous research showing that supervision involves multiple agents and processes of socialization, intersecting components of identity, and negotiations between varying cultures and expectations. In addition, the book offers new insights about how alternative learning modes and continuous interactions between PhD students and supervisors across disciplines can provide fruitful spaces for handling new challenges. A core argument for practice and future research is that supervision can no longer be limited to the dyadic, pre-scheduled meetings between a supervisor and a PhD student, but needs to be approached as a distributed practice across temporal and spatial modes of organization.

Humans tend to mark their presence and thus their lands by naming charismatic places such as mountains, canyons, rivers, and lakes. Toponyms is the term for marking places with names. In doing so, cultural groups claim the lands and the recognition of their presence through names in their language and behaviors reflecting their culture. When other cultures occupy these lands, they similarly mark them with their own place names, thus replacing earlier names and evidence of occupation. A conflict of toponyms occurs when one cultural group uses their power to maintain a superior attachment to the land. This chapter uses six toponym ethnographic studies to understand the origins of debates between Native American and settler colonial peoples in North American. Research findings from these studies define both the importance of toponyms to cultural groups and possible resolution of heritage conflicts. All studies have been reviewed and approved for public use for place interpretations, visitor education, and culturally appropriate management by funding agencies and participating Native American tribes and Pueblos.

This chapter analyzes experiences of interdisciplinary supervision in the humanities and social sciences in Norway and Sweden. The focus of the chapter is the supervisors’ experiences of benefits and challenges in interdisciplinary PhD research, as expressed through a survey and interviews. The supervisors represented academic departments with varying degrees of interdisciplinarity in PhD programs, from more traditional monodisciplinary to inter- or transdisciplinary settings. As in previous studies, many of the supervisors experienced challenges in balancing enculturation versus developing the students’ critical, independent, and innovative research skills. However, this experience also increased their own awareness of their disciplinary background and perspective. The findings of this study thereby show how interdisciplinary supervision may deepen, rather than dissolve, knowledge about disciplinary perspectives and how these may benefit the research process. A further insight is how increased professionalization of supervision might have a double effect of leveraging competence but also shifting responsibility for the process as well as the product of the PhD education from the student to the supervisor. Furthermore, the study clearly indicates that such a shift runs the risk of increasing emotional support work, particularly among female supervisors.

In this paper, I argue that transhumanism is ultimately not fruitful for humanity in general and should be rejected. I identify a central presupposition in transhumanism, which I denote as 'the more-is-more' assumption. I then discuss this assumption in scenarios often discussed within transhumanism. These are the 'prolonged-life scenario', the 'upload scenario', and the 'radically-enhanced-human scenario '. Despite positive effects suggested in these scenarios, I argue that the 'more-is-more' assumption leads to negative consequences for the human relationship with life. I conclude that the 'more-is-more' assumption and the temptation to follow it should be resisted; thus, transhumanism should be rejected.

Through a comparative reading of two court cases, one from Singapore and one from Japan, this contribution critically engages with the question of what religious freedom legislation can do and under what conditions. Both cases involve the refusal by members of Jehovah’s Witnesses to bear arms, in the Singapore case in the context of National Service and in the Japanese case during Kendo practice in a publicly funded school. Although the stakes are different in the two cases, they both engage with the question of when members of minoritised communities are allowed to deviate from national norms. By juxtaposing the two cases, the contribution explores the question of under which conditions religious freedom can do what it is intended to do – i.e. to allow members of minority communities the freedom of belief and practice – and when it inevitably fails to do so. The contribution argues that while the dissimilarity in stakes between the two cases certainly contributed to the different outcomes, the question of to what extent a religious minority is perceived as a threat to the public good and survival of the state can also significantly impact the outcome of religious freedom cases.

Today’s technologies, being intangible and invisible, can significantly influence individuals and societies. Just as imperceptible, yet significant, can be the influence of technologies’ owners or those who operate them, especially in social media. This has an uncontrolled and unpredictable impact on the growth of contradictions and polarization, including religious. Today’s technologies construct individual experience in a way distinctly different from the past, and they are forming what could be called “package perception”. This is a kind of perception which does not distinguish shades and does not understand untypical combinations of characteristics. This problem is exacerbated by the growing algorithmization, as well as the desire of technology owners to keep us engaged and sell us something – goods, services, or views. Such technologies also strive to become all-encompassing, permeating the entire picture of the world, similarly to religious movements. The four manifestations of the digital age—“digital neurotization”, simplification, categorization and “information fatigue” – may aggravate polarization of opinions, thus leading to religious contradictions and radicalization.

Existential groups (EGs) have been used in mental health care settings to help patients struggling with various mental illnesses, some proven effective in reducing psychiatric symptoms and increasing self-awareness, hope, and meaning in life. However, there is a need for greater knowledge of health outcomes, characteristics, and treatment variables of such groups. To provide clinically valuable knowledge for group therapists and further research, a scoping review was conducted to determine the characteristics of EG in terms of leaders' professions, time frames, diagnoses, locations, patients' and clinicians' affiliations, theoretical approaches or traditions, treatment rationales, and outcome variables and results. A systematic database search identified relevant papers published between 2013 and 2023. Of 4,838 unique publications, 22 were eligible for inclusion. EGs in mental health care featured numerous group characteristics linked to different group leaders' professions, clinical contexts and diagnoses. Multiple therapeutic rationales, together with different secular, spiritual and/or religious traditions were found to be applied in diverse ways. A quantitative method was used in 17 of the 22 studies, of which six were randomized controlled trial (RCT) studies. Both psychological and existential outcomes were measured, such as reduced psychiatric symptoms and increased self-awareness, hope, and meaning in life. Research on EGs in mental health-care settings has increased, characterized by robust study designs demonstrating the effectiveness of EGs. The findings can contribute to a more evidence informed implementation of EGs in clinical practice. However, more research is needed on semi-open long-term groups, long-term outcomes, and qualitative and mixed-methods designs.

Början av 1900-talet var en omvälvande tid i det svenska samhället. Allt var i rörelse: idéerna, strukturerna och kvinnornas möjligheter till inflytande.

12 kvinnors kallelse berättar om tolv kvinnor som utifrån sin livssyn påverkade och förändrade både kyrka och samhälle under den här betydelsefullaperioden. Vissa är välkända, andra lyfts här fram för första gången. Ebba Pauli,  Anna Söderblom, Elisabeth Beskow, Anna Sörensen, Gertrud Aulén, Emilia Fogelklou, Ester Lutteman, Gunni Hermelin, Siri Dahlquist, Anna Bohlin, Ingeborg Wikander, Signe Walder. 

Boken riktar sig till studenter inom teologi och humaniora – och till alla som intresserar sig för kvinnohistoria. Den är skriven av forskare inom teologi, religionsvetenskap och historia.

In The God Strategy, David Domke and Kevin Coe introduced the concepts of God talk and faith talk to distinguish between explicit and implicit references to religion in American political discourse. Although God talk is perhaps more prevalent in nations where allusions to religion are commonplace in political language, faith talk – speaking to adherents through the use of “cues” that are often imperceptible to outsiders – is more likely to be used by politicians in states such as Japan, where secular legislation restricts the political discourse. In this paper I will illustrate how faith talk is used as a rhetorical strategy in the discourse of politicians representing Japan’s conservative right, with a particular focus on the rhetoric and public image of Abe Shinzō. Abe fostered an image of himself as a self-proclaimed nationalist and devoted “Shintoist,” and he retained close ties to many of the organizations that together form the postwar “Shinto establishment,” including the Association of Shinto Shrines (Jinja Honchō, NASS). Although Abe was rarely as explicit as U.S. presidents tend to be, through his words and actions he disseminated the image of Japan as a “Shinto” nation.

The Russo-Ukrainian War has significantly accelerated the integration of artificial intelligence (AI) and drones (or unmanned aerial systems) into modern military operations, transforming security and defence. Traditional doctrines, centred on static, physical defences, have proven insufficient against the speed and adaptability of AI-enabled drone warfare. Drawing on recent operational evidence, this paper identifies three doctrinal shifts: the replacement of fixed defences with dynamic monitoring networks, based on collaborative human-AI decision-making; the decentralization of innovation through collaboration between military units and civilian actors; and the recognition of drones as inherently dual-use technologies requiring tailored policy frameworks. By analysing Ukraine’s adaptive approach to limited resources, the study underscores the strategic advantages of proactive detection, predictive analytics, and rapid technological iteration. These findings suggest that states that integrate AI-driven anticipation and dual-use preparedness into their doctrines will be better positioned to safeguard the civilian population and critical infrastructure in an era of rapid technological diffusion and evolving threats.

Hur förhåller sig religiösa människor till alkohol? I den här antologin gör femton forskarenedslag i olika religiösa traditioner historiskt och inutid för att ge några svar på den frågan. Bokens kapitel berör frågor om lagar och regler, om bordsgemenskap och rit, om poesi och metafor och om interreligiösa möten. Här behandlas ämnen som sufisk vinpoesi, Martin Luthers syn på öl och vin, sakes roll i samtida shinto, vinets ställning i den hebreiska bibeln och kornölets roll i fornegyptisk religion. I boken skildras vitt skilda perspektiv på rusdrycker som alltifrån djävulskt träck till himmelsk ambrosia. Bokens kapitel är författade av forskare med anknytning till det högre seminariet i religionshistoria och global kristendom vid teologiska fakulteten, Uppsala universitet. Redaktörer för boken är Ernils Larsson, teologie doktor i religionshistoria, och Kajsa Ahlstrand, professor i missionsvetenskap/globalkristendom.

This book takes up the contentious issue of artificial intelligence (AI), and more specifically the evolving nature of AI-mindedness, as a legal entity in society. With the increasing potential of AI suggested by the recent surge in creative and administrative tools and large language models, there is a growing concern about the ethical and legal implications of incorporating AI into society. As these systems become even more powerful and their ability to mimic human output grows, the question of whether and how to attribute mental states to AI, even in its most nascent form, has become a pressing concern. It is, for example, unclear what kind of mind AI might be capable of and therefore what the proper legal analogy might be for how we attribute reasoning capability, intent, responsibility, liability, agency, and so on, to it. This book contributes to this new and important area by bringing together front-line research from diverse fields on the topic of understanding ‘AI-mindedness’, and how it – and our relationship to it – might be regulated. Through a collection of chapters, written by experts from law, public administration, tort, psychoanalysis, philosophy, linguistics, computer science, and political theory, this volume offers an insightful examination of current research, theoretical frameworks, and practical applications that are shaping the AI–human relationship. This book will be of considerable interest to scholars and researchers working in legal theory, socio-legal studies, law and technology, and science and technology studies.

Ancient figures and symbols are carved into a high rock wall beside the Colorado River, just south of where a traditional Native American geotrail crosses the river near Moab, Utah, USA. Based on ethnographic interviews with tribal and pueblo representatives, the rock peckings identify an ancient ceremonial geosite, which, among other purposes, serves as a site for the Celebration of Creation. The interpretation of the site is situated within the geologically complex and ancient cultural heritage region composed of functionally interrelated nested geoscapes that surround the study area. The analysis is informed by ethnographic interviews from six U.S. federally funded studies that involved thirteen participating tribes and pueblos. The analysis is guided by an intellectual framework aligned with internationally recognized UNESCO heritage categories—namely, geosites, geotrails, and geoscapes. Grounded in these UNESCO heritage categories, the analysis advances new interpretive frameworks, theoretical insights, and culturally responsive strategies for heritage management.

Scholars have urged the examination of how Nature’s rights may link with other rights- claims to impact political struggles between local communities and central governments over decision-making authority. This article examines two court cases that were decided by Ecuador’s Constitutional Court in order to shed light on the ability of Indigenous and non-Indigenous communities in Ecuador to employ the rights of nature in their efforts to contest the approval of extractive projects. The article contends that conjunctions be- tween nature’s rights, human rights and the precautionary principle have challenged three patterns of knowledge creation and use that have supported the primacy of the national interest. The first is the presumption of co-existence of Indigenous land uses and mining projects. The second is the state’s power to classify land based on the level of protection for which it is eligible. The third is the treatment of differentiated actors as equivalent stakeholders. 

Death is a prominent theme in many Nordic films. This article takes a closer look at films with a focus on losing a loved one or facing one's own death. The article studies how death is imagined, ritualized and framed, as well as what insights into contemporary views on death the films can be argued to capture. Four themes are explored: 1) expressed beliefs about what happens when one dies, 2) death rituals, 3) experiences of dead loved ones and 4) representations of afterlives. The findings are related to Charles Taylor's work on the immanent frame. It is argued that the general framework of the films is secular, even when glimpses of an afterlife are provided. Something happens when death is brought up which calls for or indicates that something more is needed. However, what this "more" is, is largely left open for the viewer to decide.

As global maritime transportation continues to expand, the number and tonnage of ships continue to increase, and the pollution and energy consumption caused by ship navigation have drawn significant international concern. Appropriate shipping energy efficiency measures (EEMs) can effectively reduce maritime transportation emissions and operating costs, thus achieving a win-win outcome between economic and environmental benefits. Among shipping EEMs, the just-in-time (JIT) arrival strategy has emerged as a highly promising measure and attracting widespread attention. This paper provides a comprehensive review of the feasibility of enhancing ship energy efficiency through the JIT arrival strategy. First, the concept and classification of shipping EEMs are introduced, followed by an exploration of the potential of enhance ship energy efficiency through JIT arrival strategy. Then, the applicability of applying artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) approaches to achieve JIT arrival strategy is elaborated. Subsequently, comparative tests are conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the JIT arrival strategy. The results show that the JIT arrival strategy improve fuel efficiency by 6 %, thus confirm its effectiveness in reducing energy consumption. In addition, the implementation of shipping EEMs is analyzed and summarized from the perspective of social practice, thereby offering guidance for scholars and decision-makers in pursuing studies related to improving shipping EEMs through JIT operation.

This article concerns the legal activities of The Mission Covenant Church of Sweden (Svenska Missionsförbundet) in Lower Congo (present-day Democratic Republic of Congo) between 1881 and 1908. The temporal delimitation stretches from pre-colonial Bakongo societies of lower Congo through King Leopold II’s infamous colonial Congo Free State. We ask about the Swedish missionaries’ theological-practical and jurisprudential approach to fulfilling the Christian mission through law and state building in Congo. The focus is on a notebook from 1904, entitled “Trials” (Rättegångar), telling of trials held by the missionaries at Kingenge mission station. We show how the Swedish missionaries ministered divine faith and executed earthly justice by adjudicating over its Christian Bakongo parishioners and non-Christian peoples from surrounding villages. We argue that rather than pursuant to a division between state and church jurisdiction (theology of two kingdoms), the missionaries acted as colonial legal intermediaries in a context of legal plurality, pursuing a theological, practical, and jurisprudential approach through multiple kingdoms as they drew on pre-colonial normative-cultural frameworks and authority, theological argumentation, and Free State jurisdiction to fulfil their Christian mission in Congo.

Few issues stir more controversy than granting citizenship to refugees, particularly in nations hosting large numbers for extended periods. Turkey's decision to naturalise selected Syrians between 2016 and 2024 offers revealing insights into this challenge. This study examines two questions: (1) What role has crisis played in shaping the scope of the changes introduced? (2) How will Turkey's exceptional citizenship for Syrian refugees reshape citizenship governance in Turkey? We employ three conceptual lenses - crisis, grey zones and policy windows - within a historical institutionalist framework and refugee citizenship politics perspective. Using a multi-method approach and drawing on policy documents, political discourse analysis and 33 interviews with Syrian applicants, we find that the Syrian crisis opened a policy window, allowing the government to craft an ambiguous 'exceptional citizenship' scheme in 2016. This program operates under ambiguous conditions through selective invitations, fast-tracked processing and opaque eligibility criteria. Yet this bold experiment faces fierce resistance from opposition parties and the public. Rather than cementing institutional change in Turkey's ethnonationalist citizenship regime, it remains contested ground. The case illuminates how seemingly liberal refugee policies, born in crisis, can reshape migration governance and citizenship politics-even if their long-term impact remains uncertain.

This chapter analyses legal gender recognition (LGR) in former sovietised EU Member States, focusing on Estonia, Hungary, Lithuania, and Poland, with comparative insights on the broader region. It examines whether LGR procedures exist, how accessible and transparent they are, and whether they comply with European human rights standards. The analysis highlights diverging trajectories: Estonia offers relatively progressive, law-based procedures, while Hungary has eliminated LGR altogether. Lithuania and Poland rely heavily on judicial practice, creating inequality and uncertainty. Across the region, medical requirements and political resistance remain major obstacles. The chapter also considers private international law aspects, including recognition of LGR registered abroad, and situates current developments within broader debates on European values, democratic backsliding, and the rise of anti-gender politics.

This chapter discusses how processes of mediatization shape the increasing visibility and contestation of religion in public debate. Mediatization captures the interrelated processes of change between media technologies, institutions and practices and other parts of society and culture. The first part presents a theoretical framework for the interplay between politics and traditional news media as institutions in various European contexts, as well as how this interplay has changed through the emergence of digital media. The second part presents examples from research that engaged with this framework to analyse contemporary intersections between religion and politics in Europe. These examples come primarily from a Nordic context with comparisons to the UK, Italy and Poland, and illustrate the complex ways in which mediatization of religion and politics is manifested in regions with different media and political systems. These examples bring out the benefits of a dynamic approach to mediatization for analyzing variations and implications in the interplay between religion and politics in Europe. 

The emergence of AI raises critical questions about its potential for self-awareness, subjectivity, and agency. Presently, AI systems are predominantly utilitarian, as they are built on parametrising. These systems excel at target computing and patterning yet lack the inclination to think or the desire to know, as per Hannah Arendt's terminology.

AI's integration into human life poses subtle yet profound challenges to human agency. These include: (1) the influence of AI (or those who control it) on our decisions and choices, which affects free will and action, and eventually human autonomy, (2) difficulty separating the actions/decisions of a person and a machine in the case of literally embedding AI elements in a person, and (3) over-reliance on AI, which leads to blurred responsibility and the emergence of new, algorithmic type of thinking. This trend toward algorithmisation risks oversimplifying complex issues and stifling doubt and debate, further altering human cognition.

Merging with AI impacts essential human traits like free will, doubt, justice-seeking, and unconstrained reflections. AI-mediated governance of behaviour, shaping perceptions and interactions, is subtle yet pervasive. Merging with AI makes human beings someone or even something else, calling for a critical evaluation to determine whether this fusion is a deliberate choice or an inevitable trajectory, considering its negative implications for humanity.

Religion Extended contributes to discussions of aspects of religion that go beyond the epistemology of belief, incorporating other states such as understanding, emotion, knowledge of persons, knowledge-how, as well as practice. The author looks to bridge the gap in the study of religion between research of religious beliefs, on the one hand, and research of religious practices, on the other. She reconsiders key methodological concepts that traditional philosophy of religion and neighbouring disciplines (e.g. cognitive science of religion, psychology of religion, and theology) take for granted, such as “religious belief” and “religious faith”. The book offers a compelling and provocative reframing of these notions by drawing on cutting-edge developments in cognitive science, as well as insights from an Orthodox Christian perspective, which shed light on religion in important ways that tend to be neglected. Presenting a challenge to the received conceptual framework, this innovative and thought-provoking volume will advance discussions and open new areas of research.

There is growing scholarly and policy interest in understanding how destination and transit countries develop return migration policies and collaborate with origin countries. This study investigates the dynamics, drivers and outcomes of the collaborative process between Turkish and Afghan authorities in governing the return of Afghan migrants. Drawing on the concept of return diplomacy, derived from the broader framework of migration diplomacy-which explores the interplay between cross-border mobility and foreign policymaking-we analyse the bilateral talks and arrangements shaping these returns. Our examination of official documents, news sources, interviews and engagements with key informants reveals that authorities on both sides get involved in return diplomacy by leveraging historical and religious networks, as well as humanitarian diplomacy instruments. The drivers of this process are rooted in the domestic priorities of the Turkish government to manage return flows and the expectations of Afghan authorities and the Taliban for international legitimacy and aid through cooperation. The collaboration reflects a blend of formal and informal relations and practices. The outcomes, however, highlight significant opacity in bilateral negotiations and arrangements. These efforts lack a structured readmission framework and have resulted in record-high coerced returns of Afghan migrants (officially 42,498 in 2022) with minimal monitoring. While not fully representative, this case study provides valuable insights for enhancing theories of migration diplomacy and return governance by underscoring the utility of a decentred approach and emphasis on South-to-South contexts.

Recent research papers and tests in real life point in the direction that machines in the future may develop some form of possibly rudimentary inner life. Philosophers have warned and emphasized that the possibility of artificial suffering or the possibility of machines as moral patients should not be ruled out. In this paper, I reflect on the consequences for moral development of striving for AGI. In the introduction, I present examples which point into the direction of the future possibility of artificial suffering and highlight the increasing similarity between, for example, machine–human and human–human interaction. Next, I present and discuss responses to the possibility of artificial suffering supporting a cautious attitude for the sake of the machines. From a virtue ethical perspective and the development of human virtues, I subsequently argue that humans should not pursue the path of developing and creating AGI, not merely for the sake of possible suffering in machines, but also due to machine–human interaction becoming more alike to human–human interaction and for the sake of the human’s own moral development. Thus, for several reasons, humanity, as a whole, should be extremely cautious about pursuing the path of developing AGI—Artificial General Intelligence.

The diffusion of artificial intelligence (AI) into organisational settings presents new challenges for professional learning. Unlike earlier technologies, machine-learning systems are characterised by opacity, adaptability, and indeterminate outputs, which complicates how professionals understand, trust, and integrate them into practice. While research on workplace learning has examined digital tools as mediators of knowledge acquisition, less attention has been paid to how professionals discursively negotiate the meaning of AI itself. This article examines sensemaking during the development and attempted implementation of an AI tool for maritime operations. Based on an ethnographic study of a two-year innovation project involving developers, data scientists, captains, and shore managers, the analysis focuses on interactional episodes of dialogue and negotiation. The study shows how developers’ sensegiving, often framed through metaphors of improved vision and prediction, clashed with maritime professionals’ counter-narratives grounded in pragmatic routines, institutional constraints, and conceptions of competence. These discursive tensions limited the possibility of collaborative learning and hindered adoption. By conceptualising sensemaking as a situated discursive accomplishment embedded in sociomaterial practice, the article contributes to research on workplace learning and technology by advancing a contextual model of inter-professional sensemaking that illuminates the conditions under which emerging technologies are integrated, reinterpreted, or resisted.

In the digital age, technologies are permeating our lives, but control over them is not in our hands. Companies, especially transnational corporations, including those in the legal field, are becoming increasingly influential players. Many digital tools, whose effects are global and unpredictable, belong to businesses and are developed primarily to allow companies to make profit. At the same time, unlike governments with direct human rights obligations, corporations have many more opportunities to act on the edge of law and ethics, or even beyond.

Manipulating our trust and attention, companies influence freedom of expression and diversity of opinions, as well as legitimate democratic processes. Using our data to profile and automate information processing, companies intervene in our privacy. The ever-increasing use of artificial intelligence in the provision of services contributes to algorithmic discrimination. Making consumers dependent on devices, applications, digital platforms and environments companies are widening the ‘digital divide’, which further distances us from achieving gender, social, political and other kinds of equality.

Digital technologies can potentially improve everyone’s lives, promote justice, and help us better respond to global threats. However, in a world where private interests are placed above fundamental rights, the rally for information resources overshadows universal values, and politics has an upper hand over law, these technologies turn out to be dangerous tools. Is there still room for human rights in the fruitful alliance of business and digital technologies?