Nils Henrik Fuglestad

Nils Henrik Fuglestad graduated as Cand. Philol. from the University of Oslo in 1975. He holds a major in History and degrees in Philosophy and French literature and language. As assistant professor he gave lectures on modern history and did research on social and economic history at Bodø Regional College for several years. In this period, he was also a visiting Research Scholar at London School of Economics where he specialised in the sociology of development. 

As a trained historian, he has published articles on Norwegian labour movement history and on contemporary Norwegian petroleum history.

In 1986, he was employed by Statoil, the national oil company of Norway, and stayed with the company for more than twenty years. During his career in the petroleum business, he has held positions as manager and project manager on different levels in exploration, mid-stream and down-stream business areas, as well as in corporate services. In addition to this broad managerial experience, his fields of expertise include information management and organisational development.

On behalf of Statoil, he assisted the Petroleum Museum of Norway as special advisor through the museums’ opening years around 2000. His main responsibility was to develop concepts and design a platform for the documentation and research activities of the institution. By the end of 2007, following the Statoil-Hydro merger, he accepted an offer of early retirement and started planning a project on national strategies in petroleum history.

He joined Petrad as project director in February 2009.