Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector
Research on civil society and the voluntary sector is a long-standing tradition at the Norwegian Institute for Social Research. Today, this research topic covers Norwegian as well as international conditions.
Norway has a rich and vibrant civil society that is of huge social and economic value. The majority of the adult population engages in voluntary work each year. In recent years, the ISF’s long-term research in this field has been further developed and extended to include new topics, such as the role of non-profit organisations as welfare providers and the importance of civil society for community resilience.
Much of the existing research on Norwegian conditions has been conducted at the Centre for Research on Civil Society and the Voluntary Sector, a cooperation between ISF and NORCE Research Centre. The Centre for Research on Civil Society and Voluntary Sector studies long-term trends in participation, organisation, and policy.
Civil society research has a strong international and comparative dimension, expressed through participation in a EU-COST-Action on social entrepreneurship (Empower-SE) in the Nordic network for co-creation (NOS-HS) and in the completed EU-FP7 project Third Sector Impact (2013–2017).
Contact
- bernard.enjolras@samfunnsforskning.no
- Phone
- +47 97 68 92 37
Most Recent Civil Society and Voluntary Sector Projects
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Mapping of volunteer-run open meeting places June 24, 2026
The project examines the characteristics of volunteer-run open meeting places, how they can be distinguished from other leisure and youth services, and their current scope in Norway.
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Mapping the Voluntary Sector in Oslo June 11, 2026
The City of Oslo wishes to map the voluntary sector in Oslo. This was last done in 2019, before the pandemic, and there is therefore reason to update knowledge about the city’s voluntary sector.
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Centre for Sustainable, Risk-averse and Ethical AI (SURE-AI) Mar. 12, 2026
SURE-AI is a research centre that addresses major challenges related to resource use, risk, and ethics.