Biography - Kari Elisabeth Børresen

Kari Elisabeth Børresen is Senior Professor (emerita) at the Faculty of Theology, University of Oslo. International pioneer of Gender Studies in Religion, she started her research already in 1961. She is a specialist in historical Western theology from Late Antiquity to Early Modernity and has analysed the interaction of androcentric anthropology and Godlanguage in the formation of Christian doctrine.

She has introduced the term "matristics", in order to correlate the Greco-Roman inculturation of ancient Church Fathers (mainly third to fifth centuries) with the Northern European inculturation of medieval Church Mothers (mainly twelfth to fifteenth centuries), both considered to be leading agents in formative Christian theology.

Professor Børresen has been visiting professor at leading North-American and European universities and has co-ordinated several scholarly networks and international research groups.

A reforming Catholic, she is currently investigating the conflict between religious freedom and women's universal human rights, with focus on gender models in Christianity and Islam