Aðalbygging
Ceremonial Hall
Ólafur Örn Bragason will defend his doctoral thesis in Educational Sciences at the Faculty of Education and Diversity, University of Iceland. The defence will take place on Friday, 14 August 2026 at 13:00 in the Ceremonial Hall of the University of Iceland Main Building.
The thesis is entitled Professional Knowledge in Transition: Police Education Reform and the Reconfiguration of Knowledge in Icelandic Policing.
About the thesis
This doctoral project examines the reform of police education in Iceland following the transfer of basic police education from the National Police Academy to the University of Akureyri in 2016. With this reform, police education became a university-based programme, bringing new expectations concerning professional knowledge, competence, academic thinking, and the relationship between education and police practice.
The project explores how this reform shaped police education and ideas about legitimate knowledge within Icelandic policing. The thesis consists of four studies. The first analyses policy discourse surrounding the reform, focusing on legitimating principles, tensions, and contradictions. The second examines how flexible university-based education expanded access to police education, increased the number of graduates, and contributed to changes in staffing and gender representation. The third compares police students’ valuations of enduring and emerging competences before and after the transition to university education. The fourth explores how newly graduated police officers integrate academic, experiential, and relational forms of knowledge in everyday police work.
The findings suggest that moving police education to the university level does not, in itself, transform police culture or professional practice. However, it can create important conditions for reflection, critical thinking, academic knowledge, and more holistic competence. For such changes to become embedded, the police organisation must actively support knowledge sharing, professional development, and a learning culture.
The project highlights that academic knowledge and professional experience need not be understood as opposites in policing. Rather, the findings suggest that police professionalism is shaped through the interaction of academic knowledge, experience, reflection, and the competence needed to respond to complex and varied encounters with the public.
About the doctoral candidate
Ólafur Örn Bragason (b. 1978) completed a BA degree in Psychology from the University of Iceland in 2002, an M.Sc. in Forensic Psychology from the University of Surrey in 2003, and clinical psychology training for professional licensure at the University of Iceland in 2004. He was licensed as a psychologist in 2004 and received specialist certification in forensic psychology in 2012. He also completed a postgraduate diploma in university teaching at the University of Iceland in 2022.
Ólafur has worked at the Office of the National Commissioner of the Icelandic Police since 2004, including as a psychologist in research, Head of Research and Development, and Director of the Police Education and Professional Development Centre. He has extensive experience in university teaching. He has taught forensic psychology at the University of Iceland and Reykjavík University and, since 2016, has contributed to teaching in police education at the University of Akureyri. He is also an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Police Science Research at the University of Akureyri.
Ólafur is married to Ingibjörg Ólafsdóttir, and they have two children, Tinna Katrín (b. 2008) and Darri Steinn (b. 2012).
Opponents: Dr. Katja Hallenberg, Principal Lecturer in Policing at Canterbury Christ Church University, England, and Dr. Andrew Wooff, Associate Professor of Criminology at Edinburgh Napier University, Scotland.
Principal supervisor: Dr. Guðrún Geirsdóttir, Professor at the School of Education, University of Iceland.
Co-supervisor: Dr. Ingólfur Ásgeir Jóhannesson, Professor Emeritus at the School of Education, University of Iceland.
Doctoral committee: In addition to the supervisors, Dr. Marie-Louise Christina Damen, Adviser at Kulturtanken in Norway and Guðmundur Ævar Oddsson, professor at the University of Akureyri, served on the doctoral committee.
Chair of the ceremony: Dr. Bergljót Gyða Guðmundsdóttir, Vice Dean of the Faculty of Education and Diversity, University of Iceland.
All are welcome.
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Buses 14, 1, 6, 3 and 12 stop at the University of Iceland in Vatnsmýri. Buses 11 and 15 also stop nearby. Let's travel in an ecological way!