Mari Heglum is a political scientist with an interest in how the welfare state and social policy shape the life course, particularly the transition from youth to adulthood. Her research includes youth marginalization, the connections between young people’s work and family life, and inequalities in life trajectories by gender and social background.
In her PhD, she used registry data to follow young adults’ transitions and pathways through education, work, and social benefits, and examined changes in these pathways across birth cohorts for men and women with different social backgrounds. She also studied how family and work careers condition each other, and the relationship between family policies and the career trajectories of young mothers.
Heglum has a background from the voluntary sector, commissioned research at Proba Social Research, and as a doctoral fellow at the Work Research Institute (AFI). She is currently affiliated with the Centre for Research on Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector at ISF and the Department of Social Work, Child Welfare and Social Policy at OsloMet through the Research Council of Norway project UPSTREAM. There, she studies whether broad welfare reforms – such as childcare expansions and cash transfers to parents – can prevent child neglect and contribute to better life courses for volnerable children and youth.