Jens Kjeldsen, Ph.D.

Jens E. Kjeldsen is professor of rhetoric and visual communication at the University of Bergen (Norway). His main research areas include visual and multimodal rhetoric and argumentation, rhetorical reception studies, speechmaking and speechwriting, royal rhetoric, political debates, and rhetoric and expertise in the pandemic. He is presently working on issues of credibility, trust, and ethos and on the rhetoric of fraud and scam. Among his publications are "Ethos, technology, and AI in Contemporary Society" (2024, Ed. with Aaron Hess).
Kjeldsen is the co-founder and longtime president of the Rhetoric Society of Europe, the co-founder and longtime chief editor of the research journal Rhetorica Scandinavica. He is also the founder and leader of the national Norwegian speech competition Seize the word, which teaches high school students to take the word and exercise rhetorical citizenship. Kjeldsen is the winner of several teaching and communication awards and has received the Grand Award of the international Cicero Speechwriting Award, offered by the Professional Speechwriter Association