2.Methodology and Methods

Interviewing and holding conversations with different stakeholders, experts and citizens in Trondheim was the main research method we used for our fieldwork. There are many reasons why we chose to qualitatively interview people instead of asking them to fill out quantitative surveys or questionnaires. From an epistemological point of view, we chose to conduct interviews because we wanted to generate knowledge through human interaction. We wanted to interact with people and reflect upon our conversations with them instead of just asking questions and getting standardized answers. The best example to clarify our methodology is the metaphor that Kvale (1996) uses in his book “Interviews: An Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods”. Kvale (1996) distinguishes between the researcher as a “miner” and the researcher as a “traveler”. The miner thinks that the knowledge lies inside the people and it is the researcher’s role to “mine” it. The traveler, however, does not “mine” for knowledge, but rather “wanders” with people’s thoughts until original stories and perceptions are constructed. Urban resilience is also a topic that requires qualitative analysis. Here we refer to the critique that Sanderson and Sharma (2016, pg.40) provide against using quantitative methods in studying resilience: “Quantitative methods to measure resilience tend to involve calculating scores, ranks and indexes. They predominantly look at resilience as an outcome. These somewhat reductionist methods are usually driven by ‘experts’ who design questionnaires and other extractive tools based on their generalized assumptions of what resilience is.” They add: “Understanding people’s resilience to natural hazards through the lens of their vulnerability therefore requires detailed studies relying upon qualitative research methods to better reflect the unique realities of people’s everyday lives. These include tools such as semi-structured interviews, life stories, participant observations and focus groups designed to foster interaction between outside researchers/practitioners and local people.” (Sanderson and Sharma, 2016, pg.43).

1.2. Who are the people we interviewed?

To know more about the diversity of livelihoods and employment, we conducted in depth interviews with locals and asked them about the perceived risks they have. These people were: Marianne Ingeborg Karlsen (working), Kristin Susanne Karlsen (working), Karl Elmer Sagmo (student), Tyler Stewart (student), Espen Meisfjord (unemployed university graduate), and Sondre Yggeseth (student). In addition, we met an assistant at the Adult Education Center in Trondheim. To know more about how sustainable the economy of Trondheim is, we interviewed Janina Lamøy who is an adviser at Innovation Norway’s office in Trondheim, Espen Gresstvolt who is a professor at NTNU Business School, Marius Thorvaldsen who is a founder of Work Work, Jostein Storøy who is real estate businessman in Trondheim, and Sigurd Stendal who is opening a new business in Trondheim. In total we had a sum of twelve interviews. Some of them were conducted in English and others were conducted in Norwegian but they were interpreted in English by Kristina, the only

Norwegian in our group. Some of these interviews were recorded and transcribed, and others were not recorded but we wrote notes while conducting them. The finalized transcriptions and notes were the reference we used to write this report.

1.3. Secondary data

Finally, we used secondary data based on the interviewees’s recommendations. Those were state issued reports such as the Impello Analysis 2017 which is a report on tech companies in Trondheim and the NAV statistics of 2017. Most of this data were in Norwegian but again, Kristina, our Norwegian group member, read them and translated the important parts to English. We used these data to support the reflections we got from the interviewees and get a bigger picture about Trondheim, but we did not use them as an essential part of our research.