Runa Hestad Jenssen, PhD, is an associate professor at Nord University, Faculty of Education and Art. With a classical soprano background from the Norwegian Academy of Music, her versatile performance career spans folk, baroque, opera, and contemporary repertoire. She has performed nationally and internationally as a soloist with choirs and orchestras and as a member of The Norwegian Soloists’ Ensemble.Runa’s teaching and research explore voice, inclusive music education, gender, difference, embodiment, and the sociopolitical dimensions of singing. Her work draws on feminist posthuman philosophies and employs performative autoethnography and storytelling to bridge personal and professional experiences. She focuses on rethinking voice pedagogy and developing new ontologies of voice, encouraging musicians, educators, and researchers to challenge conventional practices and engage in transformative dialogue.Runa has published extensively in national and international journals and serves as board leader of the Norwegian Forum for Research in Music Education and as a board member of the Fulbright Alumni Association. In addition to her involvement in the INTRACOMP project, Runa is currently a researcher and project manager in the Horizon Europe project dialoguing@rts, promoting cultural literacy through performing arts education, and a researcher in the ERASMUS+ funded Teacher Education Academy for Music project.
